


How To Walk Before You Run

by finnickyfox



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: A How To Guide To Leveling-Up From Accidental Hot Babysitter to Accidental DILF, Accidental Dimension Hop, Accidental Isaac Lahey Acquisition, Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Because the McCall pack are oblivious kids, Domestic Fluff, Except canon Claudia death, Fix-It, Healing Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Slow Burn, Stiles Stilinkski: Catnip To The Supernatural And Broken Kids, Stiles Stilinski's Name is Mieczysław, Stiles Stilinski-centric, Stiles Stops Supernatural Fuckery, Stiles is the Beacon Hills Hot Babysitter, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Vernon Boyd & Erica Reyes Live, You've Heard of Oh No He's Hot. Now Get Ready For: Oh No He's Not Terrible, Young Peter Hale, s l o w burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23731327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finnickyfox/pseuds/finnickyfox
Summary: “You’re not supposed to be here,” Stiles blurts out. Which yeah, okay, that probably isn't the right thing to say when he’s actively trying tonotseem like the enemy. To the eruption of growls, Stiles throws his hands in front of him. “I’m not a hunter! I’m from the future and Derek’s supposed to be at a basketball game. Calm down.”“Calm down?!”“Right, can we just ignore foot-in-mouth disease? And focus on what I'm doing—saving your lives.”“Wait," one of the wolfed-out Hales slurs between their fangs, "aren’t you Hot Babysitter?”Stiles focuses on breaking the mountain ash line. He can despair about his Beacon Hills nickname when he's not in a burning house with semi-feral werewolves.
Relationships: Braeden & Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale & Stiles Stilinski, Isaac Lahey & Stiles Stilinski, Laura Hale & Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Sheriff Stilinski & Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Stilinski & The Pack, Stiles Stilinski & Young Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 373
Kudos: 1932





	1. Little Runner

The Fae call him The Little Human Who Runs From His Own Name. Stiles thinks it’s a little dramatic and that they should at least shorten it to Little Human. According to the Faerie guards, however, they’re as dedicated to the mouthful of his newly bestowed name as he is dedicated to running. Whatever the fuck that means. Stiles’ days of running for his life are long behind him. 

All the bestiaries Stiles has stumbled across have conflicting information on dealing with faeries or fairies or Fae—none of them even agreeing on an official title for the supernatural folk. The one common agreement from dozens of first-hand accounts is to never, ever, ever refuse a gift from the Fae-faeries-fairies. 

No one mentioned anything about being dished a curse and the proper etiquette of dealing with such a situation. Unless you counted Sleeping Beauty and the needle-curse-thing. Stiles had only seen the movie version of the tale, the live-action one with Angelina Jolie, and all he remembers is having an uncomfortable boner for the bird dude. So, Stiles takes the lack of bestiary warning as a green light to complain to his heart’s content. It may be important to note that he’s also a little drunk still and running on near-death-experience adrenaline. Besides, he is already being cursed, how much worse can it get? (Probably a lot worse, but hey, Stiles may be intelligent but he’s never claimed to not be an idiot). 

He hasn’t been killed yet, which he takes as a good sign. That might be due to Stiles having saved Fae royalty, as you do, while trying to get laid at a gay bar. It’s not Stiles’ fault that the very pretty man turned out to be the Fae Queen’s long-lost great-great-great-grandson. He never would have followed the guy outside if he’d known.

It started out with delicious neck kissing which turned into Stiles nearly having his throat ripped out. Assuming the guy was a variation of an incubus species, Stiles stabbed him (thank you paranoia for the knife in his boot even when looking for a good fuck). Once Stiles’ bad luck gets going, it keeps coming, so of course he ended up with an ambush of creatures coming for the guy who tried snacking on Stiles’ neck. Stiles then killed what turned out to be the Fae Prince’s captors—five nasty creatures with teeth in their eyes. Teeth. In their eyes. TEETH.

Stiles should be drowning in Fae favors.

Except the whole stabbing the Queen’s favorite grandchild turned out to be a big no-no. Thus, favor: not being killed for the stabbing and back-talking. Curse: to be determined. 

“Stiles,” the Queen states. A tug pulls sharply in Stiles’ chest and he gasps like the handful of other times she’d said his name. Predictably, she says his birth name next, “Mieczysław.”

Another tug pulls from his sternum, the force almost identical to his nickname, maybe a little stronger. The Fae Court flittering behind the Queen tutts at his reactions. 

“You are a runner, indeed,” the Queen says. Her eyes twinkle with dark amusement, flashing from honey-brown to black. Her wings flutter lazily behind her as she circles him. “How does one hold power over someone with two names split in equal measure of truth? You are clever even when you do not know it.” She flits back to her original placement in front of him. “I am quite taken with you, my Little Human Who Runs From His Own Name.”

Stiles tries not to think about _The_ Human being changed to _my_ Human. He latches onto a glimmer of hope. “If you’re quite taken with me, maybe we can pull back on this whole curse thing? Because that would be, you know, really great. Very, uh…generous of you.”

That backfires immediately. The previously amused guards stiffen. Good work, Stiles.

The Queen’s wings flutter rapidly until her feet are a few feet off the floor. “Are you saying I am not a generous Queen?”

Stiles cringes. “No! No, I mean, yes, I mean—you’re a very generous Queen!”

The Queen’s wings relax from their flurry and her tiptoes brush back down against the floor. She hums. “My grandson should have taken you as a consort. Ah, well, it is what it is. Unfortunate as it seems, I tire of this dilly-dallying. A curse and off you go.”

“But—”

The Queen huffs. Stiles’ mouth closes with the wave of her dainty hand. The doors to the side of the court room burst open and six minuscule faeries carry in a large golden pot.

“Oh my god, I’m going to be human soup,” Stiles says. Giggles surround the court—guards once again at ease—as if Stiles hadn’t nearly had his throat ripped out a few hours ago from their beloved Prince. How silly of him to assume they’d want more of his delicious flesh! Clearly, they do have a taste for human, so could they stop fronting, please.

The tiny faeries lie the pot behind Stiles. He twists his neck for a glimpse. It’s filled to the brim with a thick, milky substance. The rippling liquid has squiggles of what looks like clock hands twirling nonsensically under the surface. 

“Pip, pip, my Little Human Who Runs From His Own Name. You cannot run from time if you _are_ Time. Or a bit of it, to be precise. I will even be _generous_ and place you in a dimension where you can still save your little friends.” The Queen’s pleased smile twists into a toothy grin as she grips Stiles’ shirt and yanks him forward. Her black eyes glow honey-brown. “You will not strip your name of its power in half again. You are _Mieczysław_.” 

With that final command, the Queen pushes Stiles. He falls, flailing into the thick, sticky substance of the Clock Pot.

* * *

**⇤ ⇤ ⇤**

* * *

Stiles throws up cogs and clock hands for a good half-hour on an abandoned dirt road. The contents of his vomit sink and disappear into the soil without a trace, along with the silvery substance that dribbles past Stiles’ lips. He’s always loved Ron Weasley to an obsessive degree but he feels an especially strong kinship to the redhead right now. At least Stiles isn’t hacking up slugs.

A long stream of gears pour out his throat, clanking against his teeth, and for a few moments Stiles is positive he’s going to choke and die. 

When it comes to an end, the last clock hand dissolving into the road, Stiles slumps onto the ground, moaning, “Magic sucks balls.” It’s not fair—the ball-sucking was supposed to happen at the bar and in a very satisfying context with sexy consent and absolute distraction from the fuckery of the supernatural world. 

“Never trust a pretty face,” Stiles tells the dirt as darkness grasps at the edges of his vision and pulls him under.

➠ ➠ ➠

Stiles wakes up to something nudging his foot. He groans and refuses to open his eyes and face the day. Fuck, what had he done last night? He remembers scrolling through Scott’s Instagram and wondering if he was willing to risk dipping his toes back in the supernatural world. Based on the spectacular hangover drilling through his skull, he’s assuming his decision had been an enthusiastic no. Man, he’s getting too old to drink his problems away. Is twenty-five old? It feels old. In high school, Stiles had thought it would be a miracle if he made it to the ripe age of eighteen.

Ugh, there goes the thing nudging Stiles’ foot. It feels like someone’s shoe. Vague memories of the local gay bar swim to the front of his mind. Did he take someone home? No, he’s definitely not lying on a bed. Or on wood floors. Or on a carpet. Oh, god, is he lying on dirt? _Did he black out on a road?_

“Kid?”

That has Stiles opening his eyes and springing forward. Looming above Stiles in the harsh morning light is his very much alive father—dressed in rumpled clothes and looking decades younger. He frowns at Stiles without a hint of recognition in his eyes. 

  
“Oh, fuck, _time_ ,” Stiles remembers and promptly curls over to throw up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A time travel fix-it with surprisingly little angst! Thank you for reading <3 If you have a moment, I'd love to hear any and all thoughts :) I'm pretty nervous dipping my toes in the Teen Wolf fandom. I've got like 10 diff fics and thought I'd start with this one...
> 
> **also I stopped watching Teen Wolf after season Season 5 part 1. So part 2 onwards I have no idea 
> 
> Next chapter: The Homeless Polish Cousin Twice Removed


	2. Homeless Cousin

So. Fairies. Curses. Time. Stiles! Or maybe not Stiles because apparently he’s required to go by his full birth name now. There’s a bind on his heart that tightens when he thinks of introducing himself as anything other than Mieczysław.

“My son’s name is Mieczysław, too. My wife insisted on it. Or your Aunt insisted, I guess. Cousin?”

“Aunt is good,” Stiles says. He resists drumming his fingers on his thigh, not wanting to give away any ticks that this world’s Stiles might also do. 

“Okay,” Dad says. Well, Dad 2.0 says. Maybe Stiles should just think of him as Noah. Ew. Stiles pushes his bubbling hysteria back down. Dad 2.0/Noah smiles at Stiles as he brakes at a stop sign. “I always wanted a nephew.”

Stiles jerks his head in a nod and manages a grimaced smile. Noah is treating him like a crime victim with that calm, easy-going voice. Stiles has heard Dad use that tone dozens of times at the station and crime scenes. He’s just never been on the receiving end of it. It’s close to how Dad helped him through panic attacks and nightmares but with a touch of clinical distance. Truthfully, he’d rather Noah be indifferent than acting just shy of fatherly.

But as nauseous as it makes Stiles feel, maybe it’s for the best. It helps create a distinct line that screams Deputy, not Dad. Because this isn’t Dad-Dad. This is an alternate universe or dimension or weird fake reality the Fae forced Stiles into. Everything looks and feels the same as what Stiles is now calling the OG Timeline. Well, it’s all the same except that he’s in the past. Way, way, way back in the past. A whole motherfucking decade, at the very least.

“How old are you?” Stiles blurts. It comes out as a croak, his voice still hoarse from all the crying.

Dad—no, Noah—chuckles in that _I’m A Professional You Can Trust_ way. Ugh. “Thirty-two,” Noah says. He waits a beat before casually asking, “What about you?”

Well, fuck. Stiles walked right into that one. He has no idea how to play this off. He’s a beautiful fountain of youth and pretending he’s a teenager would be easy. It matches up with his cover story to say eighteen. But—Stiles doesn’t _want_ to be a teenager. The only thing worse than dealing with teenagers is _being_ a teenager.

Also…there might, maybe, perhaps, possibly…be a teeny, tiny, itsy, bitsy…part of Stiles that just doesn’t want to lie to his dad. And _yes,_ he knows it’s not technically Dad.

It’s just—Stiles doesn’t harbor much guilt over the circumstances in which Dad died but he can’t move past all the _what ifs_. 

What if he talked about werewolves right from the start and a crack never formed between them from all the misunderstandings? A crack that grew into a canyon of mistrust. They’d made a good effort stitching the gap closed when the secrets aired out. It didn’t give them back the years from high school that they lost, though. Stiles’ deepest regret isn’t about not being able to save Dad from death. What haunts him is the lies he had kept.

So! Moving on from that tragic note, Stiles had learned his lesson from OG Timeline that lying just leads to permanent, heavy emotional baggage. Yep, Stiles _totally_ took advantage of this clean slate, or whatever the fuck this is, and he told Noah everything. Yes, yes, he did. Obviously _._ Duh. He confessed to belonging to a different dimension and being slam-dunked into a new world because he hooked up with a faerie and he’s sort-of Noah’s son but also not because he fell into a clock pot and he’s backwards in time but he’s still the same age from OG Timeline and—

Yeah, hah, no. Sike—Stiles had looked up at Dad 2.0, thought about his grave hollowed by lies and regret, and he picked up the metaphorical shovel to keep on digging.

Which, all of this is to say, Stiles had a panic attack.

He’s a bit fuzzy on the details now that it’s passed and he’s safe with a plausible explanation, riding in the car with Noah. All he remembers is there were a lot of tears and snot and hyperventilating. He’s pretty sure he even climbed into Noah’s lap when he sat down beside Stiles. He can’t bring himself to feel ashamed about that. Sitting in Dad’s lap has always been the safest place in the world, and Stiles thought he’d never have that again. The last time he got away with curling in Dad’s lap was after the Nogitsune. The years before and after that, Stiles had always been “too big” or “too old” for such childish comfort.

Stiles had pushed himself away from Noah once it sunk in that he was _Noah._ Working on counting his fingers, Stiles slowed his hiccuping sobs into even breathing, in through his nose and out through his mouth. A panic attack isn’t exactly the perfect first impression, but it did buy Stiles the golden ticket to a story that wouldn’t end with him being arrested or thrown to Eichen House. 

Here’s the wonderful secret to lying: it’s a dance. A back and forth of the deceiver laying out blank spaces and the person being deceived filling up those gaps with assumptions. Stiles can’t act for shit, as evidenced by the epic fails of his teenage years. Even when he managed a half-decent lie, people always sensed something was off. 

Once Stiles discovered the beauty of misleading? Oh, man, the ways in which he can weild lies by omission as a weapon. He fucking _thrives_ on assumptions. 

Having every visible patch of his skin blooming with bruises and scrapes from the fight against the teeth-eyed creatures gave Stiles a lot of room to work with. The cover story basically spun itself without any prompting.

At the end of Stiles’ weeping, Noah had said, “Hate crime?”

Stiles, realizing his babbling between sobs included words like _running_ and _kissing faeries_ , said, “Yes.”

Noah said, “What’s your name?”

“Mieczysław,” was out Stiles’ mouth before he could help it. He deflected Noah from processing that by leaning back into his panic, hitching his breath as he said, “I have nowhere to go.”

Noah said, “Because you were kicked out.”

Stiles said, “Yes.” He _had_ been kicked out. Kicked out of his dimension.

Then, “Is there anyone I can call?”

And, “Yes, but—they don’t know who I am.”

Which led to, “They don’t know…” Thoughtful pause. The fast-paced thinking of a Deputy with the mind of a detective. “Wait, Mieczysław—is that a family name?”

_Bing-bang-boom!_ Cover story within reach.

Stiles rubbed his eyes to hide his relief, mumbling, “My great grandfather. It's Polish.”

Hello, old friends— _hook, line, and sinker_.

Noah said, “Does the name Claudia mean anything to you?”

If Stiles had come right out and spun this story of being in danger of a homophobic situation and on the run for refuge to a relative he’d never met and who knew nothing about him, and then by some miracle the man who found Stiles on the side of the road just so happened to be the husband of said relative and had a son with the same name—Well. Stiles doesn’t think that would have gone smoothly with his shifty acting abilities. But his hysteric sobbing? The overwhelming sincerity of it—because he had been freaking out, just for different reasons—really pulled it all together, waving away the plot holes. 

With a strategized mind, Stiles had re-focused on the pain of seeing not-Dad, spurring his anxiety attack to come back with a vengeance. Noah hurriedly helped him into the car, explaining his wife is Claudia and etcetera.

So…

Stiles dug his grave real fucking deep this time.

He might as well say he’s eighteen. The younger he is, the more sympathy he’ll get. It stings, though, to not have one honest truth other than his name. 

“Alright,” Noah interrupts Stiles’ spiraling thoughts, “this is home.”

Blinking, Stiles turns his head to look out the windshield. He doesn’t remember them pulling forward from the stop sign or passing through the town to the residential area. Yet, here they are, parked in the driveway of his childhood home, the car keys in Noah’s hands. Stiles stares at the familiar two-story house, identical to all the others on the street. The warm blanket of safety clashes strongly against the knife-sharp dread in Stiles’ gut.

He sees through the window that the front door hasn’t been painted over yet. There are still handprints pressed all over it in different colors, faded, from him and Mom on a boring day before Stiles started pre-school.

Or, rather, from “Uncle” Noah’s son Mieczysław and “Aunt” Claudia.

_Jesus christ_ , Stiles hears Dad say in his head, _what have you got yourself into this time, son?_

➠ ➠ ➠

Stiles vividly remembers the what-in-the-absolute-goddamn-fuckity-fuck moment his eyes set on de-aged Derek. Back in Mexico, during OG Timeline summer before senior year. That had been a total mind-fuck. 

Seeing Stiles’ own de-aged self? It’s the mind-fuck to end all mind-fucks. His de-aged self isn’t even de-aged—he's just the age naturally, no intervention, no way to age him back up. He’s legitimately a _baby_. Okay, toddler. Alright, _kid_. But he’s still a very short kid! It’s freaky! His smattering of moles are emphasized without the freckles that come in later and his upturned nose stands out as his most defining feature with that giant head not matching his yet-to-grow body.

The only consolation Stiles has is that his eyes do not look freakishly amber, like a Beta’s shifted eyes, fuck you very much to all the werewolves who teased him so and that one hunter who mistook him as a creature. His eyes are a very normal brown, maybe a _tiny_ bit lighter than common brown eyes, and they’re very sexy—on adult Stiles! They’re cute and adorable and sweet on Baby Stiles.

For once, Stiles feels one-hundred percent confident in saying this is the weirdest thing he’ll ever see. Usually, he keeps himself from thinking such a bold statement because, hello, that’s just asking the universe to make life weirder and worse.

“When your face isn’t ugly, it looks like mine,” Baby Stiles says. He’s sitting across from Stiles—regular, OG Timeline Stiles—at the dining table and staring with wide, curious (normal brown) eyes. 

“Mieczysław,” Noah reprimands. He shoots Stiles an apologetic grimace. Baby Stiles rolls his eyes. 

“That’s not my name,” Baby Stiles says. He looks down at his dinner plate, moving around the peas with his fork in a classic avoid-the-dad-face move. Noah spares a tired look at his son before glancing at the stairs that lead to the bedrooms, where Claudia is resting. 

OG Timeline Mom never liked when Stiles protested his birth name. He figures this world’s Mom-but-not-Mom feels the same. Occasionally, Stiles wonders if he’s not in an alternate world and he actually went back in time in his original dimension. Everything is identical to the point that Stiles has the frightening thought that maybe he’s just locked inside his mind, reliving his memories.

It’s been almost a week since Stiles arrived, most of which has been a sleepy haze of Adderall withdrawal. The bruises on his face have mostly faded, which is probably what Baby Stiles meant by saying Stiles isn’t ugly anymore.

This is their first real interaction and chance to size each other up. Baby Stiles had been surprisingly uninterested in the sudden appearance of his Polish cousin. Stiles chalks the lack of curiosity up to the conversation he overheard about something going on with Baby Scott. Baby Stiles had been throwing tantrums left and right about needing to sleep at the McCalls even on school nights or else the world will implode.

“Fine, Mietek,” Noah says, choosing not to pick the battle over names.

Baby Stiles, however, is determined to fight on it. He points a finger at Stiles and says, “You call him Mietek! We can’t both be Mietek!” Baby Stiles butchers Mietek, but less so than he stutters through Mieczysław.

“What about just Miet?” Stiles offers. He remembers briefly using that before he decided on Stiles.

Baby Stiles glares at him and shovels peas into his mouth in defeat. Noah sighs and turns a tired smile toward Stiles. They’ve barely seen each other since Stiles’ arrival. Noah’s either working, taking Claudia to and from the hospital, or caring for Claudia in their bedroom. Stiles has had a few short conversations with not-Mom, most of which she makes small talk in Polish with him and tries to get him to eat more. She's not avoiding him. It’s more like she’s too exhausted to do anything but lie in bed. Stiles feels guilty for how relieved that makes him feel. 

“How long is he going to stay?” Baby Stiles asks.

“Mieczysław,” Noah says sharply. Baby Stiles sticks his tongue out and then grins when it draws out a chuckle from Noah. “I’m going to check up on Mom,” Noah says as he stands. “Behave, kiddo.”

Stiles focuses on eating the rest of his mashed potatoes as fast as he can. Baby Stiles watches his dad wash his plate in the sink and then make his way upstairs. Stiles gives up on his hope for a hasty retreat and abandons the last of his potatoes, leaning back in his chair and bracing himself for the interrogation. The moment Noah is out of sight, Baby Stiles whirls to face Stiles.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.” Close to the truth and fits his fake story nicely. Fresh out of college with no place to go.

“I’m nine.”

“You’re eight.”

Baby Stiles’ eyes narrow. “How do you know?”

Stiles points to the calendar hanging on the fridge. The page hasn’t been flipped to March yet and the four rows of February dates can hardly be seen underneath the large sloppy letters that take up the page— _MISCHIEF TURNS EIGHT!!!_

Baby Stiles flushes. He changes direction. “Why are you here, _cousin_?”

“I have nowhere else to go.”

“How long are you going to stay?”

“I’m not sure. I’m looking for somewhere else to stay.”

Baby Stiles’ eyes widen. He’s so round-cheeked and chubby in general. He won’t be diagnosed with ADHD and lose weight from medication side-effects for another few years. His shocked expression at Stiles treating him like an adult, being bluntly honest, makes him look so innocent and fragile. It really puts the _baby_ in Baby Stiles. 

Seeing what vulnerability looks like on his own face—his young face, so unprepared for the harsh world—freaks Stiles out. He’s so caught up in the discomfort of it all that the intensity of Baby Stiles’ next questions throws him off-kilter.

“Do you not like us?” Baby Stiles’ glare is mildly intimating, Stiles has to admit. How does he pack so much anger and outrage in such a little body? Stiles finally understands what people mean when they say he has an expressive face.

“What? No. No. What?” Stiles flounders. “Why do you think I don’t like you?”

“You want to leave!”

Stiles finds himself weirdly defensive. “Do you want me to leave?”

“I don’t know!”

“Well, I don’t know either!”

Stiles and Baby Stiles stare each other down, both breathing a little heavy. Baby Stiles’ flush deepens and Stiles feels his own cheeks heat up in splotches. They both turn their heads to look at the staircase, apparently having the same worry that they’d been too loud and Noah's going to come reprimand them. Or, reprimand Baby Stiles. Noah seems conflicted on how to treat Stiles, either as a kid he’s taking under his wing or as an adult he’s providing shelter for. 

When no one appears, Baby Stiles’ shoulders sag in relief. Stiles thinks back to how tense Baby Stiles’ body has been throughout this whole time. He feels bad and doesn’t know what to do with that.

The kid pushes his peas around. Quietly, he says, “Mom’s sick.”

“I know,” Stiles says, equally quiet. Noah had explained it to him on the first day. 

He didn’t give the details but Stiles understood once he saw the calendar. 2002. If things line up with OG Timeline, that means Claudia should have been diagnosed a few years ago. Last year should be when it became more noticeable, the fatigue and delusions veering into debilitating. In a year and a half, she’ll die.

“Do you hate your name?” Baby Stiles asks. He smashes peas with his fork.

Stiles considers. He admits, “I can barely pronounce it.”

That earns him a wide, toothy grin. One of Baby Stiles’ front teeth wiggles, nearing the point of falling out. “Me, too,” he says. The kid’s face gives away the spike of giddiness he feels, an open book to him starting to see the potential of camaraderie with Stiles.

Shit. Stiles has been going about this all wrong. If he continues, he’ll be doomed to an endless loop of mind-fucks. He can’t keep seeing the kid as just a mini version of him.

Not-Dad is Noah. 

Not-Mom is Claudia. 

Baby Stiles is…

Mischief. 

The burn behind Stiles’ eyes is bearable and stings less after a deep breath. The tightness in his chest isn’t from the stupid fucking faeries messing around with his name. Only a symptom of his normal emotional turmoil. “Mischief” has always been Stiles’ secret treasure, hidden and locked away and close to his heart. After Mom died, he’d scream as loud as he could until his face turned blue whenever Dad tried calling him that. 

Stiles can never be Mischief again. But maybe the kid can. Maybe he doesn’t ever have to give it up. Maybe he can learn to let people outside of Mom, Dad, Melissa, and Scott call him Mischief. Maybe Stiles can convince him to keep going by Mischief even when Claudia dies, so that he can always carry a piece of his mom with him, unlike Stiles.

Stiles loves his nickname, loves the identity of being _Stiles_ , but sometimes...he aches for Mischief.

Leaning over the table, Stiles reaches his fork over and scoops up the abused peas on the plate opposite to him. While chewing, he asks, “So, am I Miet or Mietek?”

Mischief perks up in his chair, pleased with given the control. He tilts his head, squinting one eye closed as he looks at Stiles. He hums. Stiles has to suppress a grin and tries to look as solemn as possible through the decision process. It includes several more faces, stretched out lips and winking eyes.

Eventually, Mischief straightens, placing his hands clasped in front of him. “I get to call you Miet,” Mischief pronounces the name easily. The faerie bind around Stiles’ chest doesn’t protest—his birth name shortened but still respected enough to keep their approval. Then, Mischief declares with an air of boldness, “Everyone else can call you Mietek.”

Stiles holds back a laugh. To anyone else, Mischief’s upturned chin and furrowed eyebrows come across as determination. Stiles, though, sees the way Mischief’s cheeks puff out slightly as he chews on his tongue between his teeth. Despite the nervous habit, he doesn’t back down from his demand to have a name only he gets to call Stiles by.

Thinking back to Peter offering the Bite nearly a decade ago, Stiles wonders what werewolf instincts would have done to Stiles’ pre-existing possessive tendencies. 

Pulling his mind out of the past, Stiles smiles at Mischief, making sure the kid knows he’s taking him seriously, and says, “Sounds good.” His lip quirks up as he adds, “I guess I’ll have to call you kiddo, then.”

When Mischief sticks his tongue out at Stiles, it knocks out his loose baby tooth and sends it flying into Stiles’ mashed potatoes. 

Noah does come out, then—Stiles and Mischief are laughing and shushing each other and laughing harder because of the shushing. They fall out of their chairs with snorting giggles.

“Daddy,” Mischeif chokes out between laughter, “look! Look, look, I lost my tooth! Can I show Mommy?”

Noah hestitates long enough for Mischief’s excitement to deflate. At the sight of the drooping smile, Noah hurriedly says, “Sure, c’mon,” and waves Mischief to come up the stairs. He jumps to his feet and races up, gone in the blink of an eye. Stiles, still lying on the floor with half-chuckling breathing, watches Noah shake his head fondly. 

“You alright?” Noah asks Stiles, holding out a hand.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I am,” Stiles says. “But I think I’m just going to lie down here a little longer.” 

Noah drops his hand to his side and gives Stiles the same fond head shake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter raises more questions than answers ones. Stiles has been here for almost a full week? What has he been up to? What's he planning? How is it seeing his mom? What's it going to be like seeing Baby Scott? How come he can go by a Mietek and it's still fine? Why is he all the way back in 2002?? I promise answers will come! This is going to be a looong fic.
> 
> I'll try and have the next chapter up Sunday night! Hopefully I can get into more of the fun plotty bits now that the groundwork has been started. :) Thank you for reading!
> 
> Oh, and sorry to everyone who prefers John over Noah. I don't really have a preference but John feels like a placeholder name to me and just makes me think "Stiles' Dad". Since he's going to have a bigger role than just "Dad", I felt like Noah fit. If it makes you feel thrown off—well, that's exactly how Stiles feels, too!
> 
> **EDIT: Didn't make the Sunday deadline! If I don't finish editing tomorrow, I'll have it up early afternoon (PDT) on Tuesday


	3. Au Pair

The day after Mischief’s lost tooth, Noah comes home dead on his feet from a nightshift. Stiles listens to him getting Mischief ready for school and into the car. The kernel of an idea pops in Stiles’ mind and, quickly, he starts spinning a speech in his head. He makes a scrambled egg sandwich for Noah to eat when he returns. While he cooks, he mumbles out pros and cons. Talking aloud helps to keep track of his thoughts and keep them from veering off.

Adderall withdrawal? Not fun! Stiles spent the past week with a whacked up sleep schedule that had him awake between the hours of six p.m. and nine a.m. In that time frame, he napped once or twice with each nap ranging from twenty minutes to three hours. 

On top of the drowsiness, his hunger sprang back with a gut-wrenching force after years of a suppressed appetite. He feels too guilty to raid the pantry since it’s not really his home and he has no money to go grocery shopping. The constant state of an aching stomach increased the hypersomnia with the dizziness and fatigue from hunger. Basically, he went into a bit of a coma. On the bright side, all the excessive sleeping absorbed the shock of the whole timey-whimey dimension travel. By the time the worst of the withdrawal symptoms washed over him, Stiles couldn’t be bothered to kick up a fuss about anything. 

What, he’s in a different dimension? Fine! Whatever! Awesome! Stiles can deal with this. He missed his window to panic the fuck out. Now there’s no time for that—he’s a full fucking week into the past of another dimension. It’s time to get to work.

And by work, he means trying to translate the notebook he’d stolen from Mischief’s room and used to document his thoughts since he arrived. It’s incomprehensible. Translating this to Normal Person is a no-go, time to jump ahead to how he can keep having a place to sleep.

“I can help,” Stiles says as soon as Noah comes through the door after dropping off Mischief. “I don’t—I don’t have any money or a way to get a job, but I could—maybe in the future, though I probably can’t make a lot—I mean, I have some connections that I might be able to—”

“Slow down, son,” Noah says, holding a hand up. He runs his other hand over his face, sighs, and walks down the hallway and into the adjoined dining and living room. He pauses at the hot sandwich plated in front of the seat that faces the stairs. 

Stiles, following on the heels of Noah’s feet, blurts out, “That’s for you.”

Noah pulls out the chair and sits, gesturing for Stiles to join him. “Why don’t you get your thoughts together while I eat. I don’t need to know anything about your history or whatever ‘contacts’ you might have.” Noah’s eyes flicked to Stiles. “Everyone has their own story. It’s up to them to tell it or not.”

Stiles gaped—holy shit. He _is_ in an alternate dimension. He measures Noah up for the first time looking past the physical traits. Is OG Timeline Dad in Noah? Is this what Dad had been like behind the scenes? Or maybe he’d been like this before and something jaded him to blindly trusting people. Then again, he had been surprisingly lenient with letting Stiles get away with his secrets in high school despite expressing his grievance and frustration over it.

Huh. Had Dad’s anger been because he was hurt that Stiles didn’t trust him with his secrets and not about the fact that he kept secrets? Something to think about later. Looking at childhood from an adult perspective is _hard_.

Alternate dimension or not, Noah still pings _Dad_ on Stiles’ radar. He’ll have to trust it for now. He gives up on studying Noah and goes back to mentally flipping through his prepared speech.

“Alright,” Noah says, finishing the last sandwich bite. He leans back in his chair, hands resting comfortably over his full stomach. His body language is open, though his eyes are half-lidded with exhaustion. “Have at it.”

Stiles takes a deep breath. He straightens his shoulders and holds Noah’s gaze. “I heard your phone call about taking...Aunt Claudia for a check-up on her cough,” Stiles admits. “Which means you can’t pick up Mieczysław from school. And I can. You only have to call the administration and tell them about me and I can start taking him to and from school. It’s a short walk and if there’s a car I can use,” a.k.a the blue Jeep gathering dust, “I can take him to and from Scott’s. I can watch him and Scott after school, too, if Me—his parents are okay with that. And I can help with homework and meals and—and, anything, really.”

Noah folds his arms over his chest. The classic half-frown is forming.

Stiles cuts in, having a pretty good grasp on Noah’s line of thinking. “I know I don’t need to. You...you’ve been really kind to me. Generous,” Stiles adds with a quick wry smile he instantly hides. “But I want to help and I’m able to help. I need to help—Uncle Noah. I...I need to do something.”

Now Stiles is the one being measured. Instincts have Stiles sitting ramrod straight from years of facing narcissistic Supernaturals. Noah’s half-frown twists up into something a little sad, something a little soft. Stiles knows that look. Dad never elaborated on what it meant and Stiles thought he’d always understood the unspoken _you’re off the hook_.

However, Noah goes to say, “You don’t have to be useful to have worth, kid.” When Stiles gapes, Noah stands up and brings his dish to the sink. He talks over the running water, saying, “I’ll call the school and talk to Melissa. We can talk about driving later.”

Fast forward three weeks and Stiles walks Mischief to school more days than not and either walks him home or drives Mischief and Baby Scott over to Baby Scott’s house. A few days after his talk with Noah and after Stiles had “met” Melissa, Noah had taken Stiles to the DMV with a handful of papers Stiles doesn’t question. They came home with the promise of a driver’s license coming to their mailbox soon. 

Seriously, where had this cool side of Dad been?! No wonder Stiles is the way he is. 

➠ ➠ ➠

Stiles likes to think of himself as an au pair. Lydia, his OG Timeline Lydia, had been that during her year in France. He’d never thought of Lydia as a nanny-type but then she’d sent pictures of the gorgeous house she got to stay at and the wealthy, wealthy family that hired her.

Some say Stiles isn’t an au pair because he’s related to the kid he watches and he’s not being paid. Those people may also say Stiles is a babysitter. Which he is not. He’s…Mischief’s fucking fairy godmother. Or something. Bodyguard? Guardian Angel? That last title might stick in the Stilinski and McCall households. 

Whatever sketchy presence Stiles might have been, he’s transformed into a gift horse Noah and Melissa don’t want to look in the mouth. Guardian Angel who can watch their kids for no cost—or what some may call “free babysitting”, _shut up_ —is a parent’s dream. Especially if one parent, Melissa, is close to becoming a single Mom, and the other parent, Noah, hands full with his deteriorating wife, is essentially a single parent as well.

➠ ➠ ➠

“I don’t want a turkey sandwich! I wanted peanut butter and jelly,” Mischief whines. 

“Tough shit, kid,” Stiles says. Mischief still won’t let Stiles call him Mischief. “Trade it for someone else’s lunch. You need to work on your bargaining skills.”

“Ugh, you’re so _weird_ ,” Mischief says as he hops on one leg over the sidewalk cracks. “I’m nine. Why do I need bargaining skills?”

“If you’re going to lie about your age, why not bump it up to ten?”

Mischief stops his hopping in favor of squinting up at Stiles. “Are you part of a mob?”

“No.”

“ _Were_ you part of a mob?”

“Yep.”

“Really?”

“No.” Stiles ruffles Mischief’s hair and laughs at the kid’s scowl.

“I’m getting closer. Dad says to leave you alone and that ‘we all have backstories’,” Mischief makes quotation marks with his hands, “which is _dumb_ because he’s a _cop_. But I’m going to catch you.” 

“If you catch me then who will carry your backpack?”

Mischief stops walking as if the question struck him in the face. He starts forward after a few seconds and then a few seconds after that, he wordlessly grabs Stiles’ hand. He launches into a long explanation of last night’s dream, which he’d already told Stiles over breakfast, as if that will distract from the hand-holding. And the subsequent swinging of their clasped hands.

Mischief drops Stiles’ hand once they make it to the crosswalk that leads to Beacon Hills Elementary School. The crossing guard waves to them, knowing not to hold up the stop sign to the passing cars. Mischief’s feet are firmly planted to the sidewalk until Scott arrives. 

“Scott has asthma,” Mischief needlessly tells Stiles the first time they walked to school together. “What if he has an attack before he gets to class?! He needs me.” 

Stiles had nodded, hearing the unspoken _I need him._

While they wait, Stiles pulls a yo-yo out from his hoodie pocket and passes it to Mischief, who takes it with grabby hands. Stiles found it under the couch the other day and it’s worked great as a fidget toy. Mischief gives up on practicing yo-yoing and tries out different techniques of swinging it to hit Stiles’ legs while making it look like an accident. 

Stiles retaliates by slinging Mischief’s backpack off his shoulders in a way that thunks the back of the kid’s head. 

“Hey!”

“Oh, would you look at that,” Stiles says, “Mrs.McCall is here.”

Mischief shoves his backpack on and throws the yo-yo up at Stiles. Stiles catches it, though it hits his eye first. Melissa laughs at the exchange, partly hanging out the rolled-down car window. 

“Good morning, Mietek,” Melissa says. “Mischief living up to his name?”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “I’d say a little mischief in life never hurt anyone, but—” he gestures to his throbbing eye. Melissa laughs and he smiles, warmth trickling into his heart. He watches her lean out the window to kiss Scott’s head after he and Mischief spring apart from their morning hug.

“Where’s my good-bye hug?” Stiles nudges Mischief. Mischief sticks his tongue out and blows a raspberry. “Oh—” Stiles exhales, stumbling back, as Scott’s little body shoots out to hug Stiles’ waist. “Hey, buddy.”

Scott, still clinging to Stiles, looks up and smiles. “Hi, Mietek! Today’s show and tell and—"

“And we’re going to be late if we don’t get going,” Mischief says, tugging Scott off Stiles. Scott lets go easily, taking Mischief’s hand. Baby Scott is incredibly tactile and much less embarrassed by it than Mischief.

Stiles catches the crossing guard’s eye to hold up the stop sign and waits next to Melissa’s car as they watch the two boys race across the street. When they’re safely across, the guard waves for Melissa to drive ahead and Stiles tells her he’ll see her at four, when her shift at the hospital ends. 

➠ ➠ ➠

Originally, Stiles considers running away. Hitch-hike to San Francisco, find a cluster of Supernaturals who won’t kill him on site, try and zap himself back to OG Timeline. The possibility of death from that route is a lot higher than Stiles is comfortable with. And he’s disturbingly comfortable with high probabilities of death. 

He can still hitch-hike and just find a job that will let him work under the table, try and make a new life for himself the best he’s able to. Slyly find a way to research his situation if he can.

It would be crazier for him to stay here. Batshit insane to be constantly in the face of everything he’ll never have again—Dad, Scott, every other baby version of friends he’d made. He’s so close and yet maddeningly far. Why stay? The reasons to leave pile and pile and pile. Will he really stand aside and watch his mom die again?

He can’t save her. She’s too far gone for any intervention to help. The brain is a tricky thing and when it’s as complex as the frontal lobes shrinking, there’s no Magic that can safely reverse that. The dementia is sure to reject any creature Bite. Even if a Bite took, she’d become semi or full feral and need to be—stopped. In a way that’s more traumatic than her ultimately dying from a compromised immune system. 

Yeah, you can say Stiles has thought about this a lot. 

His mind is always going places, always thinking about every possibility. He’d thought of time-travel before in an abstract way. The most he can do is try and help her shitty immune system from catching that cold that went around Stiles’ class in the winter of 2003. Her dementia had already been so horrible at that point that Stiles thinks she might have welcomed the sickness. Trying to keep her from germs is an invisible battle he knows he’ll never beat, even if he quarantines Mischief in a hotel or at Scott’s house. She’d caught pneumonia twice before the third time killed her. If a cold from Mischief's class doesn't get her in the timeline, a different one will find her eventually.

The Fae Queen had said, _save your little friends_. Not family (though his friends are his family). Since appearing here, Stiles...knows things. There’s no reason or rhyme to when he’ll _know_ something. It’s like how he feels that tightness when he thinks of saying Stiles out loud and how he knows that Mietek is an acceptable nickname. 

He knows he can’t save his mom—Claudia. Maybe it makes him terrible to feel a sense of calmness over that. Maybe it’s dissociation. It feels less like numbing himself, though, and more like a great deep breath of relief once you finally come to terms with something. He doesn’t have to run himself into the ground trying to stop something he can’t. He doesn’t have to hold out for a hope that will go out like a candle in a storm.

But if he’s here to save friends than why be thrust to 2002? Doesn’t the Hale fire of 2005 make infinitely more sense? Why would he need three years to prepare for that?

Then, Stiles watches Mischief and Noah, so far from accepting Claudia’s fate. He remembers the helplessness that ate away at him in childhood, the developing anxiety, the loneliness as Dad grieved through alcohol. He remembers Dad having no one to lean on besides a child and by refusing to put that weight on Stiles, he ended up isolating both of them from each other. He remembers the coping by overworking at the station and said alcohol. Not meaning to neglect the duties of raising a kid but still neglecting them, anyway.

Stiles maybe understands the Fae. Fuck them to hell and back, but Stiles understands, a little bit. His first instinct is to run away and that’s what they accused him of. Stiles is many things and stubborn is one of them. He fucking _lives_ to prove people wrong. 

He decides to stay. 

➠ ➠ ➠

“Mischief broke the red crayon—“

“I didn’t mean to!”

“Yeah, he didn’t mean to,” Scott says, “and he helped peel the paper off so I could still use it but that made everything all—all—uh—“

“Smudgy,” Mischief offers.

“Yeah, smudgy! So he helped me find ‘nother red crayon. But Matt says it’s orange but I think it looks red. Do you think it looks red?” Scott thrusts the Mother’s Day card at Stiles.

“It’s red,” Mischief says adamantly.

Stiles pretends to think about it as he delicately holds the card. It’s sticky with glitter glue and Stiles knows he’s going to find specks of glitter on his body for days to come. He hums thoughtfully at the messily drawn and colored in hearts. After enough time passes for Mischief to kick Stiles in the shin, Stiles gives a sharp nod, meeting Scott’s big eyes. He declares, “Definitely red.”

Beaming, Scott takes the card back and bounces his way into the Jeep, or as Stiles thought of it in his head, _Roscoe 2.0: Electric Boogaloo_. Mischief bullies Stiles into opening up the back of Roscoe 2.0 so he can carefully set down his crafted Mother’s Day card. Mischief doesn’t ask for any color opinions, in fact he tries to shield the card as much as possible. Once he’s deemed it safe in the back, Mischief bounds back onto the curb Stiles parked by and then in the car, crawling over Scott in the backseat. They’re adorable in their booster car seats and Stiles’ eyes linger on the cute sight in the rearview mirror.

As he puts the keys in the ignition, doors all closed and seats buckled, Stiles takes time to think about a particular nugget of information in Scott’s coloring babble. Matt, _fuck_. Without his Adderall, Stiles’ mind scatters and forgets easily. He repeats _MattMattMatt_ over and over in his head as he drives to Scott’s. He needs to put that name down on paper. While there’s zero interest in that creep from OG Timeline, Stiles isn’t going to let a child go through a near-drowning experience if it can be prevented. 

He can work that into his mess of the Shit Saver list on Sunday. He’ll use Mother’s Day as an excuse to dip out to the public library and work on his newly improved secret notebook, its contents understandable. He can check the email he set up for potential people that know about faeries or fate.

“Can I have the yo-yo?” Mischief calls from the back.

“Oh, the yo-yo?” 

“Yes!”

“The yo-yo that you hit me with. That’s the yo-yo you want? While I’m driving a giant hunk of metal and your life is dependent on me not crashing from distractions?”

“…Yes.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Hey, Scott did Mischief tell you about his dream?”

In Stiles’ peripheral vision, Scott perks up. “Yeah! There were octopuses and dinosaurs—”

“—and a spaceship filled with oranges,” Stiles says, successfully distracted.

“—and the oranges had faces,” Scott eagerly adds on.

Stiles nods along with the acceptable amount of interest for hearing the story a third time. _MattMattMatt._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize I hadn't put in the line about the Queen kicking him into an *alternate dimension* in the first chapter, so thank all of you for going along with Stiles' nonsensical time-travel thoughts last chapter! I've gone back and put it in its rightful place which is "I will even be generous and place you in a dimension where you can still save your little friends." So, yes, he's not in his Original Timeline/World. Everything is identical, however.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the chapter! We're making our way closer to the Hales and "Save Shit list". Thank you for all your wonderful comments <3 
> 
> *I've started a TW blog that's mostly nonsense about me complaining about writing and posting drabbles of stuff I write, I might post sneak peaks of this story. If for some reason you're interested in my whining you can check [transtilinski](https://transtilinski.tumblr.com/) out


	4. Man Out Of Time

_~~Stiles~~ Mietek Stilinski and the Mind-fucks: a Series. _

_Book Two: the Mind-fucks of Romance._

Stiles spends a good amount of time writing those two sentences in fancy penmanship with a pack of glitter pens he stole from Mischief’s room. He doodles a few stars and hearts around it. Really, he shouldn’t be wasting paper with such silliness but he’ll go out of his fucking mind if he doesn’t indulge himself now and then.

Okay, maybe he indulges himself a lot more than just now and then. But, hello? Look at his life? He kind of deserves an award for getting through each day, thank you. 

Excluding his short break for doodling, Stiles has made a considerable dent in the work he set out to do today, including remembering to add _Matt???_ to his Shit Saver list. Mother’s Day ended up being the perfect excuse for a day all to himself, with sympathetic looks from Noah, and the library is blissfully empty for the most part. 

His only stress is dealing with the weirdness of the weekend librarian, Adelina, flirting with him—super flattering. She’s extremely helpful in filling out orders for mythology books from the public libraries in the surrounding towns, is tooth-achingly sweet, and has the cutest freckles. 

And yet, Stiles can’t help seeing double vision of the Miss Adelina of his childhood.

As a kid, someone in their late twenties seemed _ancient_ and Adelina had never given him good children’s book recommendations. Stiles, having been a piece of shit kid, made his opinion on her bad taste well known. Adelina, in turn, poorly hid her dislike of his sass and held a grudge against him for the rest of his life in OG Timeline.

In combination of her attempts at flirting with him _now_ as well as Stiles spotting baby Lydia for the first time—it’s been a bit much. Seeing the mini version of his ex-girlfriend is all kinds of weird.

Thus, Mind-fucks of Romance!

Not that Stiles feels any romantic attraction to Lydia because holy fuck, _ew_ , that’s—no. He doesn’t even have a romantic attraction for the Lydia from his OG Timeline. It’s just that people who loved him are now babies and the (older) weird people from his past are now his only dating prospects. It hurts his head to think about. He decides to cancel romance completely until volume, like, twelve or something of the Mind-fuck series.

Book Twelve: _The Ghastly Return of Romance_.

Honestly, it probably will be book forty. Or book one hundred. That is _if,_ for unimaginable reasons, dating actually has become a priority. Unlikely.

Thankfully, Mischief’s not interested in crushes either. He’s far more obsessed with not losing Scott as his best friend. And dinosaurs. Mischief is going through a strong dinosaur phase. Stiles vaguely remembers it, at least to recall a few facts that Mischief hasn’t learned yet. It’s cheating to use knowledge of the future but whatever wins Stiles brownie points in Mischief’s books, Stiles will take it. Maybe he bring Mischief on a little outing here after school this week, let him pick out some dinosaur books that aren’t in the children’s section.

Finishing up his sketch of a cupid holding a bow and heart arrow, Stiles focuses on diaphragmatic breathing. It’s what his middle school counselor ingrained in him before he started medication, emphasizing his stomach rising with each inhale. It helps a bit with the restless itch under his skin. 

Stiles flips back to the previous page before his doodling, tapping his pen against his lip as he reads over this week’s log.

He’s taken to documenting everything, everything, everything. It clears out his brain and also keeps track of any small detail that might become an advantage. Like—ah, on Tuesday, Noah had trusted Stiles to go get some last-minute groceries. It ended up being a longer outing when Stiles bumped into Mrs.Norwood, an eighty-year-old woman who babysat him a few times after his mother died. As a kid, he never knew what a gossip she was. But by the time Stiles finished finding the items on her grocery list, he knew about five different scandals going on around town, plus her predictions of a few more upcoming ones.

Stiles pulls a highlighter out from behind his ear and draws a neon pink box around that described interaction. He pencils in this potential alliance to the list of goals for the new week— _stealth figure out Norwood sched. + worm way into doing shopping 4 Noah_.

It’s hard to change future events if you don’t know all the details of the present. Also, Stiles might be obsessing over knowing every nook and cranny of Beacon Hills to keep his mind distracted. Mischief has his dinosaurs; Stiles has this godforsaken town.

He combs through the rest of the logs. Nothing stands out. He flips farther back.

Last week’s log mainly covered nurse shifts at the hospital, which he knows by heart. He keeps flipping toward the beginning of the notebook. He passes by April and back into March. There’s a sad attempt of drawing the Fae Queen and her grandson. They look more like trolls with wings instead of ethereally pretty. On his next break, he’ll use the glitter pens to color them in.

He stops when he gets to the page that’s more ink than paper at this point. In very, very tiny cramped handwriting is every name Stiles can think of from OG Timeline. He’s skimmed it three times since he’s been at the library, skimmed it hundreds of times since he first started this notebook. It’s a fucking headache to go through.

For the first time, he hesitates over Deaton’s name and hates himself a little for considering. He’s trying his best to stay off the Hales' radar. Contacting their Emissary is the number one way to paint a target on his back. Until he gets his shit somewhat together, he’s not putting himself out there as the unnatural freak that stands out from all other unnatural freaks, likely landing him on the end of claws and teeth.

_“I’m from the future and I come in peace?”_ Yeah, sure, okay, buddy. Maybe throwing up a peace sign will grant him a few extra seconds before an attack. 

Silver lining—he’s gone two entire months of successfully avoiding all Hales. Downside? Two entire months of not making a single crack into the supernatural community.

Maybe he _should_ hitch-hike to San Francisco.

Stiles has to bake Scott’s favorite cookies tonight, though. He’s assuming Mother’s Day has a fifty-fifty chance of either going well or horrible in the McCall house depending on Scott’s shitty dad. Stiles has planned on sneaking extra cookies in Mischief’s lunchbox in case Scott needs some cheering up.

Stiles’ complicated relation with romance aside, he does have a date with flour, eggs, and sugar.

He’ll have to gently turn hitch-hiking down for now— _it’s not you, it’s me_. Maybe try hitting Stiles up some other time?

Chewing on his pen cap, Stiles moves down the line from Deaton’s name. He circles Morell. In even tinier handwriting, he writes a note to find out if she’s playing school counselor anywhere.

Popping the pen back in his mouth, he stares at Chris’ name for a bit, indulging in a few fantasies of just saying FUCK IT and hunting down the evil Argents of the family with a bazooka.

Stiles exhales a happy sigh and moves through the rest of the Hunters he knows. 

Then comes newer names from before the Fae bippity-boppity-poofed him away. He blows past his old co-workers—not really relevant. A few supernatural contacts he’d come to know in college start popping up in the list. They’re all either too young, way too paranoid for a stranger claiming to know them from a different dimension, or virtually unfindable.

Stiles misses 2019 technology. A lot. He spares a mournful pout at the library computers. 

He’d checked his email for any response from the two contacts he knows through OG Timeline Derek. He has some hope for them, considering they had worked with Derek after the fire and Derek was...y’know, _Derek_. A certifiable mess with a questionable past to outsiders, and who also needed to be under the radar. 

Stiles thinks they’d be receptive to his strangeness if their future selves had handled Derek. The main complication is if they have the same email addresses as they do—did?—in OG Timeline.

So far, it’s been two weeks since he reached out to them and no dice. Despite his empty inbox, it makes Stiles happy every time he types in his yahoo account. He may or may not have fucked around creating several accounts because he can have the perfect email handles with his knowledge of future pop culture references. Professionally, he’s settled with captainsteverogers@yahoo.com—get it? Captain America—Man Out Of Time? _Ba-dum-tiss._

Unprofessionally, he has troybolton, lipstickinmyvalentinobag, alexaplaydespacito, and dumbledordies, to name a few. He’s excited for when Club Penguin launches.

Stiles works through the string of miscellaneous people he forgot to mention earlier or have little importance other than him not wanting to forget all the details of his dimension, such as his favorite bartender.

His eyes glaze over at this point, migraine forming, and his finger perches at the corner of the page, ready to flip to another, when his brain comes to an abrupt record scratch freeze-frame moment. He takes the pen dangling from his lips and uses the end of the cap to glide backwards on the lined page, trailing under the names until—yes!

Stiles throws his hands up in the air, dislodging the highlighters behind each ear. He doesn’t give a shout of victory but it’s a close thing. Adelina startles in his periphery vision. 

Holy shit! 

Fuck, just—hold up.

What if—and not too young—and a deal—Stiles has _knowledge_ —and the rest stop—scratch that—but—no, that’s too risky—nix that other thought, too—and that one—but what if—a little risky—no—wait, yes—maybe?—fuck.

Stiles frantically flips through the notebook to a blank page and quickly scribbles down his racing thoughts.

Holy shit, he can work with this.

He can definitely work with this. It’s a little too close to exposing himself and there will be numerous death threats but in the long run? This can fucking pay off.

Hand cramping, Stiles slumps back in his chair after two newly filled pages, nearly toppling himself backwards.

Huh. Guess he will need to make a trip to San Francisco after all.

After his date with Scott’s cookies, of course. 

➠ ➠ ➠

Claudia’s tuckered out by the time Stiles returns—home? By the time he returns to the Stilinski house. 

Mischief lets Stiles in the door and nearly trips him at least five times on the way inside. Stiles raises his newly checked out books above his head, laughing as Mischief jumps up with grabby hands.

“Dinosaurs?!”

“Nope.”

“Loser.”

Stiles theatrically says, “I know you are but what am I?” 

Mischief stops jumping for the books and squints at Stiles.

“Oh, come on,” Stiles says. He didn’t travel _that_ far back in time. “Pee-wee Herman?” Mischief stares. “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure? Oh my god, we’re changing your pathetically lacking repertoire of movies ASAP.”

“Rep-tar?” Mischief scowls. “Like the dumb ‘dinosaur’,” hand quotation marks, the sassy little fucker, “from Rugrats?”

Stiles tosses his books onto his cot from the office doorway. Mischief trails after him as he walks to the kitchen. “No, _repertoire_. Rep-er-twahr. It means, like, a collection of stuff.”

“Oh,” Mischief says. His eyebrows cinch together as he quietly tries repeating the word again. He looks back to Stiles, excitement coming back with wide eyes. “Can we go to Blockbuster?”

Uh, hell fucking yeah they can go to Blockbuster! 

Stiles tries to not vibrate out of his skin as he leans against the fridge. “Depends. Have you had dinner yet?”

“No?”

“Help me make spaghetti and I’ll convince your dad to let you get two movies. If you eat your veggies I’ll try and swing a Scott sleepover.” 

Mischief throws both arms up in the air, a mirror of what Stiles had done at the library. “Yes, yes, yes!” 

Stiles gives the kid a moment to calm down. He captures attention by snapping into a mock-serious voice. “Alright, you’ll be my second-in-command. That means your the sous chef.”

“Sous chef,” Mischief repeats the words slowly. He stands tall.

“Every time I say something, you say yes, Chef!” Stiles holds out his hand. “Give me a high-five for quietly grabbing the bathroom stool and being the best sous chef.”

Mischief slaps Stiles’ hand, yelling, “Yes, Chef!”

Stiles starts boiling water while Mischief, somewhat quietly, runs upstairs to tell his parents he’s making dinner. He’s less quiet lugging the stool down the stairs and Stiles rushes to help him. He sets it under counter space that’s far away enough from the stove. 

As much as Mischief seems to hate being reminded of his shorter height, he brightens as soon as the stool gives him an extra foot to reach for anything normally out of reach.

“Hey, no lighters for the sous chef!”

“But candles! Mood lighting!”

“Lighter down, kiddo. Pass me a tomato.”

“Yes, chef.”

Stiles ruffles Mischief’s hair for the overly sulky attitude.

For such an easy meal to cook, Mischief makes the kitchen a nightmare of sauce covering the countertops, the fridge sporting several noodles thrown onto it (with a puddle on the ground of the spaghetti that didn’t stick), and a sink filled with most of the house’s silverware. 

To be fair, Stiles also kept forgetting where he’d set down a fork or spoon and would grab a new one and then lose that one as well.

While Stiles cleans, Mischief uses up his entire resource of self-control to neatly put together two plates of food. Stiles carries the plates on a tray up the stairs and once he reaches the second floor, he hands the tray over to Mischief, who carefully wobbles with it to Noah and Claudia.

Stiles returns to the kitchen and readies two more plates. He starts pulling out the ingredients for cookies in preparation for later. He’ll make those once everyone goes to sleep. It’ll be a nice way to wind down from the hours of overthinking. 

He catches movement out of the corner of his eye. Mischief is back and standing on his stool.

“Hey, no lighter!”

“But mood lighting!”

“Want to risk going to Blockbuster by burning the house down?”

Mischief proves why he shouldn’t be anywhere near a lighter by tossing it at Stiles. Standing on a stool, his aim is far too close to Stiles’ head.

➠ ➠ ➠

The cookies are a big hit with Scott.

“Mischief helped out in the kitchen,” Stiles says.

Scott jumps into Mischief's arms with an enthusiastic thanks. After, Mischief hugs Stiles tightly for the lie by omission, burrowing his face in Stiles’ stomach. His rejection to being called Mischief is only half-hearted as he mumbles into Stiles’ sweatshirt.

The rest of the cookie batch wins over the last of the nurses on shift with Melissa. They’re very protective of Scott and have started mother-hening Mischief since Claudia got sick. When Stiles first dropped Scott off at the hospital after school, the nurses pursed their lips. Every trip after that, the nurses tag-teamed interrogating Stiles depending on who was on a break.

It feels good to have the nurses back on his side even if it’s not the same as it was in the OG Timeline. He has the creeping suspicion that one of them is trying to flirt with him. He studiously ignores that observation.

Thank fuck Melissa will never look at Stiles like that. He's firmly in the category of someone who looks after her son.

Meeting Scott had gone like this—

“Hi, I’m…” Stiles trailed off to spare a glance at Mischief, who stood at Scott’s side, half a step forward.

“Mietek,” Mischief said. 

“Mietek,” Stiles agreed.

“Y’know, my ‘cousin’,” Mischief explained further, again with the air quotations. Jesus christ.

“Oh,” Baby Scott said, his entire face scrunched up in confusion. A second later—fuck, kids move through emotions so fast—his face burst into a shining smile. “Okay! I’m Scott.”

“We’re brothers,” Mischief butted in.

“Yeah!” Scott tilted his head up to stare at Stiles. He’s a few inches shorter than Mischief and far skinnier. For the first time in a long while, Stiles felt his heart seize with worry over Scott’s health. “Okay, I’m going to go tell Mom you’re not a creep,” Scott said, grabbing Mischief’s hand and scampering away. 

With Scott’s ringing endorsement, Noah’s assurance, and Stiles’ slightly frantic questions about emergency inhalers, Melissa accepted Stiles far quicker than expected. He remembers Mama Bear McCall rarely trusting others to babysit Scott. While Scott tried climbing Stiles’ back on their first meeting, Melissa had pointed out with a laugh that he and Mischief have the same doe eyes, so maybe that subconsciously swayed her. It wasn’t until Stiles’ pre-teen years that OG Mrs.McCall grew immune to his puppy eyes. The expiration date on Scott’s wide eyes and jutted lip came soon after.

Mr.McCall had done nothing but crush Stiles’ fingers in a handshake and glared at him any time their paths crossed. Luckily that didn’t happen often. No matter how guilty Stiles will feel about the fall out of Scott’s dad leaving, Stiles can’t help but count the days away for it to happen. Sometime in the Fall, if Stiles recalls correctly. Ha. McCall. Recall. Fall.

Stiles makes sure the batch of cookies goes to the hospital, ensuring Scott’s dad won’t get a single one.

➠ ➠ ➠

  
  


March had collapsed into April and April had smoothly melted into May. May trickles slowly toward June. 

The sun rises earlier, Noah’s office has shifted to being called Mietek’s room, and life has—dare Stiles say it—a comfortable routine. 

He works on his notebook when he finds pockets of alone time. This tends to be when the kids are in school and at night, when his body thrums with pent-up adrenaline. 

He rolls with the return of insomnia, devouring parenting guides, fiction novels on time-travel, and folklore books. Even if he's read something before, he checks it out from the library—never hurts to comb through knowledge with a fresh perspective. Adelina is slowly becoming a friendly acquaintance. 

Back in March, Noah had given Stiles money to take Mischief shopping for new shoes with the unsubtle hint for Stiles to buy himself clothes and necessities. Stiles picked a packet of five notebooks.

On weekends, he works on his daily life notebook, the one from Mother’s Day. During the week nights, he dedicates himself to the notebook filled with shitty attempts at creating a timeline of 2002 until 2019. 

It’s an abundance of pencil erasings and crossed-out words in pen and added carets and too many arrows. 

On the current horizon of events to look out for, he has Derek’s girlfriend’s death and Gerard gassing that peace meeting. Thank you _so_ much, Peter, for your accurate and descriptive account of those events! 

Unreliable son of a bitch narrator. 

Would it have killed Peter to be a little less extra with his story-telling and a bit more focused on details? In his notebook, Stiles circles _Der GF_ under the 2004 section and draws an arrow to the top of the page where he writes _name and time unknown_ along with _> :((((_.

Speaking of Peter, if he had been around during the girlfriend’s death, is he around now? 

A shiver runs down Stiles’ back. He hates being reminded of how little he knows about the Hales and born werewolves in general. He’d seen an older woman that looked similar to Derek at the grocery store yesterday—side note: a moment of pause to congratulate Stiles’ success at becoming the Stilinski grocer—and nearly flipped out while moving his cart to the other end of the store to avoid her.

He doesn’t trust that the Hales won’t be able to sense something... _off_ about him. If Peter didn’t fall far from the tree then most Hales will be curious about Stiles if they get a tiny whiff of weirdness. 

Please let Peter have fallen far, far, _far_ from the Hale tree.

Rubbing his eyes, Stiles glances at the radio clock Noah had sneakily put into the room for Stiles, trying to make the office more of a bedroom.

3:05 A.M. is lit up in glowing red. Stiles shakes off the image of Alpha eyes. He gives himself another hour before sleep. It is a school night, after all. He’s not eager to handle Mischief without a few hours of sleep. 

Back on track to Stiles’ other concerns, outside of big events there are the general worries, like the Eichen House and the Nemeton. There’s also the constant awareness of the safety of friends and friend-adjacents—Scott, Lydia, Erica, Boyd, Jackson, Danny, and Mischief are all well. Stiles dumps Ethan and Aiden as something he can think about if he assembles his life in any sort of order. 

Isaac is unknown, though Stiles vaguely remembers the Beta dryly remarking about his life going to shit around third or fourth grade. Stiles marks him down as safe but to keep an eye out. Then he draws an arrow connecting _Matt_ to Isaac’s name on the timeline, followed by question marks. Drowning of 2004? 2005? 

Stiles yawns and closes the notebook. For now, he’ll keep mentally working on the epiphany he had at the library and casually nudging Mischief toward making new friends. The latter usually results in Mischief running too far ahead of Stiles on the walk to school. 

Stiles is good at adapting. He waits until Mischief’s trapped in the car when he mentions a curly-haired blond boy looking lonely. Mischief kicks the back of Stiles’ chair with impressive force for the rest of the drive, in revenge for Stiles talking about making friends in front of Scott.

It’s a work in progress.

➠ ➠ ➠

San Francisco and Stiles are star-crossed lovers. His hope is to woo San Fran and start a long-distance relationship. 

The evilness keeping their love apart is Show-And-Tell.

Mischief stands in Noah’s-office-turned-guest room’s doorway, hands on his hips, refusing to enter. He’s in superhero footy pajamas and should be in bed. Stiles gives him a little leeway since it’s Friday night and Noah hasn’t come to grab him.

Stiles scratches his chin. He needs a shave. He works around refusing Mischief’s demand to parade Stiles in front of his class by pointing out, “Show and tell was last week.”

“No! You didn’t listen! Scott’s show and tell was last week!” Mischief stomps his foot. “You never listen! No one listens!”

_Woah_. Okay, so this is, like, going to be a tantrum. Apparently, Mischief’s started developing insecurities. God, isn’t eight too young for that? Stiles jokes that he came out of the womb full of angst and sarcasm. Maybe he was right.

Ugh, so unfair to deal with this a second time.

Raising his hands up, palms facing out, Stiles treads carefully with his words. “Hey, hey, I listen.” He ducks his head and makes eye contact with Mischief. “I always listen when you talk, I promise. Sometimes I forget things but that’s my brain’s fault.” Stiles twirls a finger next to his head in a “ _crazy”_ gesture. “That’s not your fault. If you say you told me something, I believe you. I just need you to explain it to me again, okay?”

Mischief sniffs. He's visibly teetering on whether he wants to jumpstart a tantrum anyway. Stiles can relate.

Mischief drops his hands from his hips and solemnly agrees, “You _are_ crazy.”

Yes! Stiles fucking rocks at this shit.

Grinning, Stiles cheerily says, “Yep. I’m cuckoo for cocoa puffs.”

A small giggle slips past Mischief’s lips. He bounds into the room, jumping onto Stiles’ cot. “See! This is why I need you for show and tell. You’re, like, supercalifragilistic-ly crazy.”

“That doesn’t—you just wanted to say a big word."

Mischief shrugs. “I also know idioms. Like...oh! You’re crazier than a bag of cats.”

“Again, that’s,” Stiles struggles, “not...that means more of an angry person. I don’t know many eight-year-olds who know what idioms are, though. Maybe you should start saying you’re in college instead of just a measly nine-year-old.”

Mischief slumps against Stiles’ pillow, mouth twisted as he digests what Stiles said—pointing out that he’s wrong, correcting him, and praising him all at the same time. He ends up rolling his eyes, a habit he recently picked up from Stiles. “Not college _,_ _Miet_. I’m too small. Maybe high school,” Mischief muses. His eyes sharpen and he points at Stiles, “When I’m in middle school, I’ll totally pass for college.”

Stiles nods. He settles with his back to the wall and legs hanging over the cot, Mischief’s feet pressed to his thigh. “Hey, want to know the dinosaur with the longest name?”

“Uh, _yeah_.”

“Micropachycephalosaurus.”

“Sweet,” Mischief breaths out. He stretches his legs out, digging his heels into Stiles’ side as he demanded to know more, more, more. 

“Nope. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.”

“What?!”

“Hey, I’ll take you to the library, dude. If you can find a book with it and tell me a fact I don’t know, I’ll let you bring me in for show and tell.”

Mischief pouts. Stiles crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows. 

Mischief throws his head back and groans until he’s out of air. “Fine.”

Smirking, Stiles holds out his pinky over Mischief’s face. 

“Weirdo,” Mischief says as if he's above pinky swears. Stiles knows for a fact that he and Scott pinky swore earlier this morning in hushed voices about something Stiles does and does not want to know. 

Maybe Mischief is smart in his reluctance because the second their pinkies are connected, Stiles yanks his arm back. Mischief jerks forward, falling over Stiles’ lap and face planting into the blankets.

Twenty minutes of an ensuing fight later, Mischief practically passes out. Stiles carries him to the second floor and hands him over to Noah. 

After Noah gently tucks his son in, he walks back to where Stiles watches the bedtime routine from the top stair. Noah looks at Stiles with that expression he and Melissa share of not quite awe, but something close to wonder, like they think Stiles is something out of this world. (If only they knew). 

Stiles gives Noah a lopsided grin. “I just egg him on until he runs out of energy.” 

“Well, it works a helluva lot better than trying to calm him down.” Noah turns to his sleeping child, already tangled in the sheets, mouth half-open in a snore. Then he gives Stiles a half-smile. “You’re probably dead on your feet.”

Stiles shrugs. He only understands Mischief’s intensity because Stiles deals with it himself. He is swashbuckling his way through the jungle of unmedicated ADHD, leading an unaware Mischief. The play fight had drained Stiles some, but he still has a few more hours of thinking before he’ll pass out.

Nonetheless, he fakes a yawn, which makes Noah yawn. They exchange an amused smile. Noah presses a warm hand to Stiles’ shoulder as he says good night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mindfuck series Book Three: My Former Weed Dealer is a Seven-Year-Old
> 
> *I know someone who works in a kitchen and when I help with meals, she has me do the Yes Chef! I'm not sure if that's a universal thing for cooks but I thought it's cute to have little Mischief do it and would make him more engaged in helping if it feels a bit like a game.
> 
> I was going to cut this chapter in half but it felt very boring with zero dialogue. I have spent a gazillion hours rearranging the scenes and editing them to fit in so many different ways and finally settled on this. I hope it makes sense and if it doesn't, for the sake of my sanity, please pretend it does! I am finally getting to the part of the story where the pace picks up.
> 
> Thank you so, so, so much for all your support!! I can't believe how many people are enjoying this. Next chapter Stiles' secret is compromised and he also meets Hale! 
> 
> Stiles: Unless I'm saving them, I do not ever want to meet the Hales  
> Also Stiles: I would love to fist fight Peter behind a Denny's
> 
> Ah, the mind-fucks of romance, indeed.


	5. Coffee Boy's alter ego: iHop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are no Hales in this chapter because it had to be split in half, sorry! I promise to make that interaction extra long in the next update

How do you start a relationship with your Not-Dad where you get friendly enough that in a bit over a year when his wife, your Not-Mom, dies, you can suggest therapy or AA meetings to him and he’ll take you seriously?

...Yeah, Stiles is pulling a blank on that one, too. 

Mrs. Norwood tries to pry information out of Stiles about the Stilinskis but he’s become fairly adept at diverting back to her newest hot gossip. She’s more than happy to tell Stiles which kids are sweethearts to babysit and which ones are little snots. When she tells him Jackson’s in the menace category, Stiles knocks down a row of cereal boxes so he can bend over to laugh.

“The Whittemores make up for it,” Mrs. Norwood says, pausing in the aisle to fake throwing imaginary dollar bills.

Stiles laughs openly. He imagines Mr. Whittmore saying, _it’s one babysitter, Mrs. Whittemore. What could it cost? Five hundred dollars?_

“I can send them your way, dear,” Norwood interrupts Stiles’ mental meme world. “I’ve heard the moms talking about you with your two kiddies. I can recommend your babysitting business.”

“‘The moms’,” Stiles says. He shakes his head, focusing on the more pressing matter. “No, no, you can keep Jackson for yourself. And all other kids. Yep, no more kids for me. I’m not actually a babysitter.”

“That’s not what the moms say. Now, to the produce section, boy.”

Norwood refuses to elaborate on Stiles’ apparent reputation among ‘the moms’ and who exactly ‘the moms’ are. She does, however, give Stiles twenty dollars after he finishes hefting her grocery bags into her car. Pocket change, she explains, since he refuses to make a babysitting income.

Stiles scrapes by watching Mischief in exchange for Noah housing and feeding him. Melissa insists on paying Stiles gas money for driving Scott around. He’s covered all the bases on the necessities of life. Making and saving money is a pipe dream he’s yet to figure out. He’ll need to soon if he wants to pay the hefty prices for rare books for research.

All signs point to saving the twenty dollars. 

Stiles drives home, puts away the groceries, goes to the school and waits for the kids, drives Scott and Mischief to the McCall house, watches them wreak havoc, bribes them by cleaning up their mess if they do their homework, drives Mischief back home once Melissa shows up, helps Noah with dinner, helps tire Mischief out for bed, packs Mischief’s lunch for tomorrow, spends the night distracted reading Mischief’s Goosebumps books, passes out, wakes up, does the Mischief School Day Morning routine, walks Mischief to school, walks back to the house, checks on sleeping Claudia, and goes and collapses on his cot, causing the money he stashed under his pillow to float out onto the ground.

Stiles stares at the money. The money stares back. The money says, _save me!_

Stiles sighs, swears, and swallows his San Francisco hopes for the temporary future. 

He goes to the local coffee shop, buys two coffees and a pastry, and drives to the Sheriff station.

➠ ➠ ➠

It’s Stiles’ third week of bringing Noah coffee the day after grocery shopping. Last night, Noah had not-so-casually mentioned when his break is. Stiles nodded, acted as if this is new information, and arrives at the station right on the dot. A few of the deputies wave hello and one accuses Noah of being spoiled.

Oh, man, if anyone referred to Stiles as spoiling Dad in OG timeline, the entire station would laugh that person out the door. 

Baby steps. First, win Noah over. Then, bully him into eating healthy. 

Noah and Stiles drink their coffees outside. Spring has hit its final stage where the mornings are freezing and by noon the sun makes any layering of clothes uncomfortable. Mischief’s left three separate sweaters at school from chucking them off on the playground during lunch and then forgetting about it. Stiles has become very familiar with the school’s secretary and Lost And Found bin.

Noah clears his throat. After an awkward moment of Stiles glancing at him, Noah goes on to ask, “How are...things?”

“Uh, good?” Stiles wracks his brain for anything, any topic at all. “How is...arresting?”

Noah chuckles at Stiles’ expense and Stiles flushes for a moment, feeling like he chose the wrong dialogue option in a video game. The brief fumble works out as Noah shifts into comfortably talking about the ins and outs of a deputy’s job.

Again, not new news. 

It’s unexpectedly soothing, however, to hear Noah go on about this and that. Having a moment where nothing needs to be done, a cup of warmth in hand, and the shifting tones of a voice that feels like _home_ washing over Stiles.

Stiles prompts a few innocent questions that provide intel on what the town gossip looks like from the law’s point of view. Other than that, he doesn’t treat this like a Norwood interaction. It’s only a calculated move in the way that he has a goal—to bond.

And Noah, it seems, maybe wants the same thing. 

The next morning, Claudia catches Stiles checking in on her after dropping Mischief off. He stares like a deer caught in headlights and she smiles at him from where she’s tucked tightly under blankets.

“Noah’s always said I make the worst coffee,” she says softly. Stiles is yet to unfreeze. “My purse still has some cash in it. It’s in the coat closet downstairs. I think he likes the company.”

“Oh—I—uh, okay—it’s—do you—I mean.” Faded memories of chocolate powder and mini marshmallows filter through Stiles’ head. He asks, “Hot chocolate?”

Claudia smiles at him again, the special one that crinkles the corners of her eyes. “No, thank you, kochanie. Hug Noah for me, yes?”

And so, Noah slots into Stiles’ daily routine, whether Stiles buys him coffee or brings him a thermos from home. Claudia catches Stiles a bit more after that and starts demanding Mischief stories.

It’s difficult switching into fluent polish but it’s exciting, too. There are a few kids books in the language around the house, meant to help Mischief learn when Claudia has lucid moments to read bedtime stories, and Stiles hoards them to read at night. 

It’s nice collecting multiple things for his brain to switch between. He’s adapting to the IRL equivalent of OG Timeline’s fifty Google Chrome tabs open on wildly unrelated topics. It honestly helps him have a sharper eye when he returns to his serious notebooks after spending hours or nights dicking around with other projects.

May, Stiles thinks, is a _great_ month and its awesomeness is carrying over into June. He’s won over the hospital nurses. The deputies have started teasing him when he drops by. He’s unfortunately become dubbed Coffee Boy, though that’s his fault for having a soft spot for the sheriff department and running errands to get them coffee and snacks if they give him the money for it. Noah and Stiles are starting to build up little inside jokes here and there that have nothing to do with Mischief. Melissa lingers in the times between picking up or dropping off Scott, asking Stiles about his day. Claudia has become less of a heartache Stiles avoids and more of a soothing background presence.

Things are good.

➠ ➠ ➠

Stiles wakes up to a knife pressed to his throat. His first concern is how unconcerned he is. He, honest to god, has a moment before he opens his eyes where he happily thinks, _sweet, I’m not being strangled._ Better to be threatened than actively killed! He steels himself for some faerie—though why they’d use a knife instead of claws or teeth, he doesn’t know. 

He gets his answer when he cracks his eyes open and his own brown eyes stare into his.

Mischief, in all his dinosaur pajama glory, straddles Stiles’ chest. “Are you going to eat me?”

“Is that a dagger?”

“Are you going to eat me?”

“What? No. Can you put the dagger away? Where the fuck did you get a dagger?”

“I found it at the park. Are you going to osmosis me?”

“Osmos—wait, you found that at the park? Oh my god, did you wash it? Did you wash your hands?”

“ARE YOU GOING TO OSMOSIS ME?”

“Hey, shady park dagger at my throat! Sketchy dagger on my delicate skin! You’re not holding it right. Here, shift your—okay, okay no touching! I won’t touch you. Just, can you pull it back and point it at me so you don’t accidentally slit my throat before you interrogate me?”

Mischief glares. He pulls the dagger—oh god, it’s covered in rust—and points it at Stiles’ forehead like a gun. At least Stiles has a few feet of distance to push himself up on his elbows for this thrilling conversation. The movement dislodges Mischief slightly and he slides down to Stiles’ lap. Thankfully, Mischief doesn’t murder Stiles for moving.

“Alright, so you were at me absorbing you? The answer is no, by the way.”

“That’s exactly what someone who is going to eat me would say!” Mischief waves the rusty park dagger as he hypes himself up. “What are you, an alien? Evil clone? Spy? Are you like HYDRA? Are superheroes real and you’re part of the evil guys pretending to be good? But why are you me? Do I become evil? Do I get superhero powers and you had to build a time machine to come back and get information on me so you can go back in the future and use my weaknesses against me?”

“That was way too many questions for this early in the morning.”

“It’s noon. Dad said to let you sleep in.”

“Where is he now?”

“Movies with Mom.” Mischief focuses the dagger back on Stiles’ face, pressing the tip of it to Stiles’ nose. Stiles goes cross-eyed. “State your business, time-traveler!”

“No.”

“No?!”

“Yeah, I don’t feel like stating my business.”

“I could stab you!”

“Please don’t. I don’t want to get a tetanus shot.”

Something about Stiles’ lack of alarm causes Mischief to deflate suddenly. He drops the dagger. Stiles blinks a few times to get rid of the double vision from going cross-eyed. When his vision rights itself, he delicately picks up the the rusty dagger with the ends of his pointer finger and thumb. Shuddering, he flings it off the cot. 

Mischief has really taken to the whole eye-rolling habit. Stiles worries that his eyeballs will fall out of his head. With a haughty huff, Mischief mutters _that was boring_ as he shifts off Stiles’ lap and bends over, dangling upside down off the cot.

Stiles barely has a moment to fully sit up before Mischief pops back up, whirling around to slam something into Stiles’ chest. He also knees Stiles in the crotch as he settles over Stiles’ legs, pinning him in place.

“Ow, _fuck_!” The temptation to kick his legs up and launch Mischief off the bed and into the wall is strong.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Mischief scoffs. He whacks Stiles again with—a very familiar composition notebook…

Stiles might have preferred a stabbing.

Which reminds Stiles—“I think we need to have a talk about your thieving tendencies. We’re circling back to that fucking dagger after this. No, you can’t pout your way out of that. Okay, now why the hell do you have this,” Stiles snatches the notebook, “and where did you find it?”

“There are no laws of the land at parks. It’s finders keepers, dummy.”

“Oh my god.”

“And,” Mischief takes the notebook back, “you duck-taped this under Dad’s desk.”

Well, fuck, no wonder Stiles hasn’t been able to find that. What kind of sleep delirious state was he in when he thought that was the best hiding place? Not that he cared since it’s the useless Nonsense Book, Prequel to Dimension-Traveling Documentation Series. 

Stiles asks, “And _why_ were you under the desk in my room?”

Mischief clutches the book to his chest, eyebrows scrunched down ridiculously like a cartoon villain, and he looks far more intimidating than when he had an actual weapon in hand. “You stole my notebook,” he snaps.

Stiles rolls his eyes—and, okay, he _has_ to stop encouraging that as a way of expressing yourself. He drawls, “It had one page about kangaroos in it. From last year.”

“Exactly!” Mischief, never in one pose for long, drops the book to flap his arms around. His eyebrows have climbed up to his hairline as his eyes grow impossibly wide. “One page! I have, like, a gazillion-bajillion more facts. How am I supposed to remember that they’re the tallest ma-surp-ul—”

“Marsupial.”

Mischief briefly sticks his tongue out at Stiles and moves on, “—and the red kangaroos are the tallest of the kangaroos and there’s so many different species, like the western gray kangaroos and the eastern gray kangaroos, and baby kangaroos don’t come out of the pouch for, like, four whole months after they’re born and—”

“Alright, alright, I get it,” Stiles fights to cover up Mischief’s mouth, “you’ve ditched dinosaurs and circled back to kangaroos.”

“—a group of kangaroos is called a mob—”

Stiles stops fighting and slumps back into his pillows. “Wait, they’re called a mob? That’s awesome!”

Mischief stumbles in his speech, breathing heavily as he comes to a halt. “Right?” he agrees, face lit up with giddiness. His expression crumples back into a glower and Stiles fights back a laugh. Petulantly, Mischief says, “You would know this if you didn’t steal my notebook. You’re the real thief.”

“If I didn’t steal your notebook I would have never known any kangaroo facts, would I?” Stiles raises his eyebrows. Mischief huffs, crossing his arms and looking away. Stiles asks, “Why do you need to write it down if you clearly have it memorized?”

Huffing is the theme of today, apparently. Mischief’s whole body heaves with the pouting exhale. His gaze flicks back to Stiles and he snaps, “You’re supposed to be me. Why do you think, poopface?”

“Not a poopface,” Stiles snaps back. He thinks back to phases he went through when he was younger—he’d cycled through topics too fast for any of them to stand out. Stiles remembers dinosaurs, sure, but not kangaroos. 

The need to document an obsession is what throws him off the most. Until discovering the supernatural world, Stiles never wrote down his findings. Soaking up facts like a sponge is one of his greatest talents. He’d gained a reputation in college of having a nearly photographic memory from all the times he tore apart snooty assholes by reciting textbooks practically word-for-word to debunk their shitty opinions.

So why the hell are kangaroos, of all things, so goddamn important that Mischief needs thoughts penned to page in case he forgets some minor detail?

“Oh, shit.” Stiles closes his eyes. He’s not so great at handling kids as he’d thought. He’s greeted with the most pitiful sight when he opens his eyes. Mischief’s curled up like a pill-bug over the notebook. Stiles forces his voice into something gentle but not overly so. “We don’t—our memory is fine. We don’t have to worry about forgetting. We’re not like Mom.”

“ _My_ mom, not yours,” Mischief says. After a moment, he uncurls. “Why do you care about the Hales?”

“What?”

Mischief huffs _and_ rolls his eyes. He scrambles off Stiles’ legs, thank god, because Stiles had lost all feeling in his thighs awhile ago. Mischief takes a minute to roughly shove Stiles over, making room to flop on the pillows, snuggled close to Stiles.

“You need a bed.”

“Says the kid that almost stabbed me.”

“Whatever. Move your elbow!”

“Okay, ow, jesus. What, is this national Harm Mietek Day?”

“You mean _Stiles_ day?” 

Stiles’ arm flies to clutch at his chest, his breath stolen for a moment. He sucks in air greedily when Mischief stops talking. “Rule number one,” he says hoarsely, “of knowing I’m a time-traveler, do _not_ say that name.”

“Sorry,” Mischief says and he sounds genuine. He bulldozes through the fragile air by putting the composition book between their legs and flipping it open. 

Taped to the inside cover is Stiles’ ID from OG Timeline, the date on it broadcasting he’s either from the future or he spectacularly botched up a fake ID. Under it, in shaky handwriting that had left Stiles’ hand pained for hours after, the bind on his chest unforgivingly tight, is _Stiles Stilinski._ His lungs tighten just by reading it. 

Mischief flips the page and Stiles is pulled back from his panic attack as laughter bubbles up his throat. Some may find it depressing in how deranged Stiles had been the first week but Stiles finds it absolutely hilarious. Before he misplaced the book, he would look through these pages to have a good laugh.

His first attempt at vomiting his thoughts on paper is a mess and a half.

  * Hale fire
  * DEREK????
  * NO DROWNING IN ICE TUBS THIS TIME!!!
  * Ugh deaton → Big No
  * Ahhh Nogitsune → HELLA BIG NO
  * Oh fuck Issac?? shit
  * heather!!
  * Erica → safe for now
  * Boyd → ditto
  * Wait Boyd sister??
  * Oh god that fucking motel!!!!
  * Lydia → ditto
  * Oof banshee
  * Allison? idk she’s alive so good enuf
  * Scott + baby me?? → AHHHHHH
  * Duc-whatever his name??? Duke? Head Alpha blind dude ~ Demon ~ ooo
  * Toe nail lady
  * Wait the twins
  * Jackson!!! Lizard!!!! LIZARD
  * STARTS WITH A K
  * GERARD AND KATE
  * GERARD!!!!!
  * AND KATE!!!!!!
  * Peter?????? Still insane???
  * No crazy Hales allowed!!!
  * Ok mayb let hales bite allisons mom
  * morals??
  * Oh fuck NEMETON
  * SHIT
  * Eichen house?? No no no thanks
  * What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck
  * DO I COUNT AS A VIRGIN AGAIN?? BORN-AGAIN VIRGIN???
  * Ewww mrs.blake
  * Stop derek from sex 4ever. Like EVER
  * Alpha derek bad alpha peter badder laura tbd??? Derek mom tbd
  * DEREKS MOM ALIVE
  * ALL THE INFO ON THE HALES ASAP



The rest of the bullet points look like Stiles switched into a language that is yet to exist. 

Mischief, ever so helpful, points to the bullet _Scott + baby me_. “I totally guessed you were a time-traveler.”

“Uh, no. You thought I was an alien coming to eat you.”

Mischief shrugs. “It’s good to have options. I wanted to see what you’d say. Why the Hales? What’s an Alpha? What’s wrong with Peter? Is Peter Murder Eyes? Derek’s lame and a total poser. Dad arrested Laura once. She was drunk. It was awesome!”

“Murder eyes,” Stiles repeats. He drags a hand over his face, stifling a groan. “Peter, no.” Stiles can vividly picture the Werewolf stretched out on the couch in Derek’s loft, side-eyeing Stiles with his _what did you expect?_ look.

Is Stiles nuts for feeling _relieved_ that Peter is morally grey as always? Finally, a constant for Stiles to grasp onto in this unfamiliar time.

Mischief blabbers on, oblivious to Stiles’ inner turmoil. “There’s also Cora. She’s in the grade above me. Murder Eyes might be her cousin. Or her other uncle. He picks her up sometimes. There’s a lot of Hales. If you make me a grilled cheese, I’ll tell you everything I know about them. And I know _a lot_.” Mischief bodily vibrates as he does during a sugar rush. “I always knew there was something weird about them!”

Stiles hasn’t even gone to the bathroom. He hasn’t stepped out of bed. Oh, and if he _does_ step out of bed, there’s a fifty-fifty chance he’ll step on a dagger.

Stiles accepts his fate with a sigh. “I get to keep the dagger and notebook in exchange for you having the right to demand a grilled cheese whenever you want.”

Mischief chews on his lip. He decides, “Deal. But you have to tell me about time-traveling because I guessed it and now you owe me.”

Stiles isn’t even going to touch that logic. Mischief went right to Stiles instead of informing his parents about Stiles’ situation—Stiles will take any win he can get. He sets a mental reminder to lecture Mischief about going to an adult instead of handling a potentially dangerous person alone.

“I’ll tell you what I can,” Stiles says, “but only if you swear to never tell anyone about me. And I mean anyone, Mischief. Not even Scott. You have to pinky swear, no backsies.”

Mischief frowns at the no backsies. “Okay. But that means Scott gets grilled cheeses whenever he wants, too.”

“Fair enough. Now, move your big butt and start talking.”

➠

“You have to be friends with Isaac.”

“What? No! No, no, no. That wasn’t a part of our deal!”

“Throw that grilled cheese at me and I’ll tell your dad about the dagger.”

“Oh my god! Shut up about the knife!”

“I’ll shut up about it when you stop being a Scott-obsessed brat.”

“Maybe Scott’s the Mischief-obsessed brat!”

“Okay, you keep telling yourself that, sweetie.”

“Gross. I’d rather you call me Mischief.”

➠ 

“What if I make Cora my friend?”

“Yeah, no bueno.”

“Why?”

“You’re not sneaky. At all. In any capacity. I’m not even sure how you’re going to become friends with Isaac.”

“No Isaac!”

➠ 

“No, they are not a cult.”

“They totally are. Like, they all live together in the _woods_. And they don’t talk to anybody but family. Why do you think I know so much about them? Because they’re weird! We have a cult and Dad doesn’t even care!”

“You tell your dad about the Hales?”

“Duh. He works with Mrs. Hale sometimes.”

“He works with Mrs. Hale?!”

“Yeah. I’ve asked her if she’s the cult leader.”

“You did WHAT?”

➠ 

“Wait. You’re from a different world?”

“Yep.”

“Hopping-traveler? Time-jumping? I’m just going to call you iHop.”

“That is _so_ not as funny as you think it is.”

“Yes, it is. I’m a comedic _genius_. Mommy says I can be a comedian.”

“News flash, that doesn’t happen.”

“Duh. Look at you. You do something dumb, like—like, calculator guys. With taxes ‘n stuff.”

“Excuse me, I had a very cool job! And no, I’m not letting you bait me into telling you what it was.”

“But _Miet!_ You already said you’re not a comedian. That’s forbidden future information!”

“No.”

“Ugh! You’re the worst iHop ever.”

➠ 

“Do I still have to come to show and tell? What’s that face for? Oh my god, what did you do? Is it another dagger?”

“No. I, um. So, like. I kinda, sorta...spread rumors that my cousin is an alien. So. About that pretending you’re normal thing…”

“ _Mischief_.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I think I’ve earned that right since you’ve been telling people I’m an alien!”

“I didn’t know I was right! I just thought you were crazy!”

“Mischief!”

“Whatever. You’re boring now. You’re _me_ from the _future_ and from a whole different world! And you’re not even freaking out. You just babysit me and Scott all day. That’s, like, weird. Double weird. You should be freaking out more. How are you so boring?”

“Oh, my deepest apologies for not living up to your expectations, your Highness.”

“It’s okay, I guess. You bring me to Blockbuster and let me in the adult section at the library. You’re cool.”

➠ ➠ ➠

When Noah and Claudia return from their day outing, Mischief tackles them, launching himself into Noah’s legs. He has the audacity to say, “You were gone _forever_. Miet was going to bore me to death!”

The brat isn’t even putting up an act of keeping the Time-hopping secret. He genuinely sounds like the whole world-altering ordeal has already lost its appeal.

At least for now, it has. Cartoon Network starting a marathon of Power Puff Girls episodes might win over Mischief’s attention for tonight but Stiles knows he’ll be back. 

Hopefully without a rusty dagger next time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so...thoughts?
> 
> As I said at the beginning, this chapter had to be sadly cut in half. I know a lot of questions are raised that don't have the answers. The second half gets to that part, plus the Meeting A Hale. In case it's not clear, Mischief does not know the Hales are Werewolves, he just knows there's something off about them and is determined to figure out what. 
> 
> As always, thank you SO much for your comments! They're so motivating and help with my anxiety about posting! I appreciate every single one, thank you <3 <3 And thank you everyone who continues to read and follow along :)
> 
> I'm really, really excited to share the next chapter once I've finished tying up a few scenes!


	6. Adult Mietek

Stiles stands by his opinion that absolutely none of this is his fault and that he’s been a great stealth ninja and obviously anybody could have made such a mistake.

Okay, maybe not everyone. Or most people. 

In retrospect, Stiles possibly brought this upon himself.

But there are factors to be considered! Stiles, for instance, is not a normal person. He will be the first to admit that he was born missing a bone for shame. It’s a point of pride, really. Oh, he feels second-hand embarrassment, for sure. Fuck that awkwardness. He knows how to go through the motions of _oh shit wait that was weird of me to do_ and say, _oops, sorry?_ Then he does some stupid shit a few minutes later, not stopping for a second to think, _hmm, perhaps I should stop going through with every impulse shamelessly_.

Moving on, factor number two—sleep deprivation. Stiles thinks he should get several sympathy points for this factor. Do you know what it’s like when someone discovers you’re a time-traveling-dimension-hopper?

Well, let Stiles tell you—it’s not easy! Especially when that someone is an eight-year-old. The eight-year-old version of Stiles, which please remember, the lack of shame bone is still very relevant. It leads to moments such as Mischief publicly regaling all the pros and cons of the different Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in one breath and in the next breath asking Stiles if they make TMNT movies in the future. 

The past two nights since the horrifyingly rusty dagger confrontation, Stiles has stayed up plotting all the ways to figure out some sort of contract-lecture-deal. The amount of loopholes Mischief will unintentionally stumble through, because he’s a goddamn kid and can’t be faulted for mishaps, is astronomical. 

Perhaps the real issue here is Stiles’ lack of faith in himself and there’s a deeply rooted issue that should be explored in therapy and—

…Now is not the time for that.

Whatever, as Stiles was defending— _explaining_ himself, he had been operating on zero hours of asleep for the second day in a row. Even worse, it was a Tuesday and whoever thinks Mondays are the worst day of the week, they have not met Mischief on a Tuesday during the school year. 

Sundays are Scott-less days, which makes Mondays exciting to see his best friend again. Thus, Tuesdays are the first real slap-in-the-face of ugh, _school_.

Now with these two factors in mind, Stiles needs no excuse for how he ended up chasing a woman down the street.

➠ ➠ ➠

“Can I borrow running shoes?”

“Do I want to know?”

“Piss off.”

“Don’t let Mischief hear you talking like that.”

“Says the man who cursed like a sailor. At a raccoon.”

“Filthy rat bastards,” Noah mutters as he lifts his coffee to drink with no rebuttal. 

➠ ➠ ➠

Stiles sleeps a lovely four hours before his alarm beeps at 5:55 A.M. He’s out the door by six like he promised.

Coach Elle jogs in place in the Stilinski driveway, smiling far too brightly at the sight of his less than eager face. “Are you running in jeans?”

Stiles looks down at his pants. When it came to outrunning monsters, he found jeans were no different than lacrosse shorts. He shrugs and says, “I have running shoes.”

Elle glances down at Noah’s old shoes with fresh strips of ducked-tape on the bottoms. She’s kind enough to not mention it. Or already resigned herself to Stiles’ bullshit. Elle’s dressed in a bright green sports bra, showing off her stupidly amazing abs, black running shorts, showing off her stupidly muscled thighs and calves, and Nike shoes, probably the newest model. 

The most unfair point is she’s a human Hale—married into the family. No special Werewolf genes giving her an athletic body. Asshole did all the work herself.

Oh, did Stiles forget to mention that fact? That he not only creepily chased down a woman, he had ended up becoming the unwilling running partner of a Hale.

Fun times.

“Ready? We better get going if you want to get your monster to school on time.”

Stiles shakes his limbs out and saddles up next to Coach Elle, moving into the empty street and starting at a slow pace. “He gets up at 7:20. It’s not like we’re running for an hour. Wait, we’re not running for an hour, are we?”

“Regretting those jeans, now?”

Stiles doesn’t respond and says very little for the next forty minutes because he’s far to out of breath. Coach Elle has no issue, talking about how nice it is to have a running buddy with someone outside her family—

“My in-laws are great but a little secluded to themselves. I think it’s nice to branch out.”

Stiles wheezes out what is supposed to be _oh, goodie_. As pessimistic as he’s being about this new development, he should be grateful Coach Elle hasn’t picked up any Werewolf aggression habits. When Mischief informed Stiles yesterday that Coach Elle was married to a Hale cousin, Stiles was shocked he hadn’t been slammed into a tree after he chased her down.

Stiles probably should stop basing Werewolf behaviors of paranoia and aggression on the actions of Derek and newly Bitten teenagers.  Coach Elle had simply stopped running two blocks after she realized Stiles was chasing her down and jogged in place, raising her eyebrows at him.

“Hi, hi, hey,” Stiles had said, bracing his hands on his knees as he wheezed. “Sorry, I’m not, like, a stalker—I live down the street and I saw you and you’re the P.E. coach. Again, not a stalker, I’m—”

“Woah, there. Take a moment to breathe,” Coach Elle said. 

Stiles spent a good minute figuring out his breathing situation. When he straightened up, he held out his hand, saying “I’m—”

“Mietek’s cousin,” Coach Elle finished, shaking Stiles’ hand, still jogging in place.

It took a disorienting moment to remember Mischief goes by Mietek at school. 

Coach Elle laughed at Stiles’ expression, misinterpreting his confusion but clearing up his next point. “It’s a small school. Everyone knows kids’ parents, guardians, whatever.”

“Oh. Uh, I actually go by Mietek, too.” Oh, how Stiles would regret giving that information away later. 

Coach Elle took it in stride. “Okay Adult Mietek, want to explain why you chased me down?”

“Oh! Right. Okay, so, I know you have Scott’s medical record on his asthma.”

“Yes, Mrs. McCall has come down to personally talk about it a few times.”

Stiles flushed. He hadn’t really thought this through when he’d been spacing out the front window, drinking coffee sludge, when he spotted her and proceeded to burst out of the house like a maniac. “Right. Yeah. I’m just—Mischief, uh, Mietek can forget, sometimes, and Scott tries to keep up with him because he’s not good at saying no yet, and if you don’t keep an eye on it, it’s just an asthma attack waiting to happen.” Stiles faked an explosion with his hands. “And, and, this all must sound really dumb and crazy, I’m so sorry, but Mischief—Mietek’s been extra restless the past few days because—“ he learned time-travel exists “—and I’m just worried because I know you’re doing a soccer unit this week and Mish-tek’s been way excited about it. And, uh, I’m not, like, insulting your competency or whatever, but maybe if you could make sure Scott has his emergency inhaler on him and not in his backpack? Or you could have it, as long as you don’t forget to give it back. Not that I think you’d do that on purpose or—”

“Woah! Breathe, kid.”

Stiles almost bit back _not a kid_. She couldn't be more than a few years older than him. Luckily, he remembered he’s supposed to be playing his age down.

Hopping from foot to foot, Coach Elle pretended Stiles wasn’t a crazy person. “I’ve got a kid of my own,” she said with a grin. “I get it. You’re a little...unconventional?” Stiles chuckled weakly. “But I respect those who are protective of their kids. I’ll keep it in mind.”

Stiles sagged with relief. “Thanks, man.”

“No problem. Might I suggest you watch out for your own asthma?”

“I don’t have asthma?”

“Could have fooled me with you nearly fainting from running two blocks.” 

Looking back, Stiles should have suspected something from her razor sharp, wolf-like grin. He was too preoccupied being offended at the time. “I don’t really have time for exercise when I have my hands full with Mischief and Scott. Mietek and Scott.”

“Nonsense. You’re up now, aren’t you? Join me tomorrow. Six o’clock.” Coach Elle took off before Stiles could answer, cementing his fate as her new pet project. It sounded horrible before Mischief had even revealed his gym coach’s connections. 

Stiles can now confirm it is exactly as horrible as he expected, far too many blocks away from home. Stiles has stopped four times from the stitch in his side before he gives up, admitting that stopping only makes it worse.

He feels a bit better when Coach Elle says, “Thanks for the heads up about the inhaler. Scott didn’t need it but there were a few close moments before I swooped in.”

“Thanks,” Stiles wheezes.

➠ ➠ ➠

“Why are we driving today? Oh! Oh! Are we picking up Scott?”

“No more walking. Ever.”

“Roll the window down! I want to stick my head out!”

➠ ➠ ➠

Stiles doesn’t go to the station for a coffee run. He passes out on the couch until he has to pick up the kids. Noah laughed at Stiles basically crawling his way from the front door to the bathroom this morning. He probably isn’t expecting Stiles to show up. And if he does, serves him right for laughing.

Stiles decrees this will be Siesta Week until further notice.

➠ ➠ ➠

Melissa picks Scott up from school on Thursday and Stiles decides this is the best time to strike with his “iHop” talk. If it overexcites Stiles and Mischief, they only have to zombie through Friday and then have the weekend to spaz or veg out.

As Mischief buckles in his seatbelt, he crows, “I’m twenty!”

Looks like his mind is on the whole time-travel topic already. 

“And I’m eight,” Stiles deadpans, pulling out of the parking lot. “And actually, I’m twenty-five.”

“I’m twenty-five!” Mischief crows. Then, “You’re old.”

“And you’re a baby.”

Mischief kicks the back of Stiles’ seat. He goes suspiciously quiet for the short drive home and Stiles knows it’s not from the baby comment. His wariness increases as Mischief hops out of the car as soon as they pull into the garage and runs off. Sighing, Stiles accepts whatever’s going to happen and grabs Mischief’s forgotten backpack. 

He makes his way in the too silent house, carries the backpack to Mischief’s room, checks on Claudia, and goes to hunt down the kid. He’s waiting for Stiles in the office-bedroom, Useless Notebook in hand.

“This is just sad, dude,” Mischief says, waving the notebook in the air. It flops pathetically in his tiny hand. “You need a murder board.”

“A murder board?” Stiles asks. “I’m not murdering—” Stiles fumbles because, technically, well…Fortunately, Mischief doesn’t notice the slip-up, too busy flapping the notebook at the empty walls. “What,” Stiles says, “you mean like a detective case board, red string? Yeah, that’s not weird at all if someone sees it.”

Mischief slams the notebook on Noah’s desk dramatically. He’s watched too much TV. “When did you get so dumb?”

“Hey,” Stiles says.

Mischief purses his lips, his hands on his hips, a daring look for Stiles to contradict him. Stiles sputters, having nothing to defend himself with. He has no idea in what way he’s been dumb. Mischief’s triumphant grin is less mocking with how it shows off the adorable gap in his teeth, the new tooth growing in, peeking out of his gums. It makes Stiles want to coo. 

Mischief rummages through the desk drawers, providing an explanation when he pulls out a wad of sticky-notes and holds them up in the air. “Aha!” For all his self-proclaimed genius, the look Mischief gives Stiles is begging for approval.

“You’re a genius!” Stiles laughs honestly, more than happy to provide validation. “I mean, they probably won’t stick back on a wall more than twice after taking them down but it’s easy enough to hide them and copy onto a new note.”

“I get to help.”

“Okay—uh, what do you think about the attic?”

Mischief bounces on his feet. “Yes! Oh my god! It can be like—like a secret lair or something! Our Batcave!”

“Okay, Robin.”

“Dude, you’re not Batman. You have no money.”

“Ouch. I had a cool job, you know! I had respect.”

“What did you do?”

Stiles picks Mischief up by the waist and deposits him on the cot before he can make his way upstairs. Sitting down cross-legged from Mischief, Stiles says, “Okay, smart guy, since you brought it up, we have to talk about the secret parts of this.” He gestures between the two of them. “There are times I’ll need to do post-it sessions on my own.”

Mischief’s outraged _what_ is more of a screech than a word. 

“I’m not going to lie to you,” Stiles says, ducking his head to keep direct eye contact with Mischief. “But there are some details I can’t say. Not just normal things like Forbidden Future Facts about my past. There are some pieces of information about what’s going on now that I have to keep to myself for...safety reasons.”

“Like what’s wrong with the Hales?”

“Exactly. Not that they’re, uh, ‘wrong’? Just...different.”

“Dangerous?”

“They’re not evil or bad people,” Stiles assures. “It’s just a lot of this is overwhelming and if you know everything, you’ll want to be helping me out in a way that’s too dangerous for kids. I won’t stop you from figuring it out though, because I know you will. You’re smart.” Mischief’s cheeks flush with the praise. “So, you focus on the mystery and I focus on doing the fixing. You can ask me any question you think of and I’ll answer if I can. But only in our secret lair, okay? Outside of the attic, I’m just regular, crazy Miet.”

Mischief chews on his lip.

“I know this exciting,” Stiles smiles encouragingly, “and I’m having fun with you, too. But this is also serious and if people find out about me, they might stop me before I can help out. And the Hales are the smartest at finding secrets out. Maybe I’m not Batman, but there are things only I can do and if I don’t do them...it won’t be good.”

Mischief keeps gnawing his bottom lip but nods. Stiles grins.

“So, how do you feel about being a spy?”

Mischief’s eyes widen. “A spy? Like, a real spy? Missions and infiltration and, and, like, top level agent?”

Stiles nods. “What’s the most important part about being a spy?”

“Um. Sneaky?”

“Yes! What makes spies special is that _no one_ knows who the spy is. How do you feel about a two-part mission?”

Mischief’s back in the game, sitting up on his knees to bounce. “Two missions?!”

“Yep. I’ll give you the details up in the attic.”

The attic’s above the second floor, it has a hidden hatch with a pull out ladder on the ceiling right in front of Mischief’s bedroom. It’s a bit cramped, a triangular space where Mischief can walk around easily while Stiles can only fully stand in the middle, at the peak of the slanted walls. The length and width is enough room for a satisfying-enough oval-shaped route for pacing. It doesn’t have exposed beams, just unpainted drywall perfect for slapping the sticky-notes on for temporary case boards. There are two boxes of old photos crammed in the corner. 

Deciding on a break between serious talk, Stiles gets to tidying up the cob webs and dust while Mischief runs around the house finding old sheets and pillows and blankets to make the space a comfy fort. Stiles had done this with his Scott for sleepovers in middle school. 

When Mischief drags up fairy lights for the annual christmas tree, Stiles sadly points out that there’s no electric outlet. Undeterred, Mischief’s head disappears down the floor entrance and he comes back with ten flashlights.

“Won’t your dad miss those?”

Mischief pulls out a bundle of string and starts tying loops around the handles of the lights. “There’s so many. Mommy got worried about what happens if there’s an apoc’lypse or somethin’. You’ll hang these from the ceiling,” Mischief says, tugging on the string.

Stiles eyes the flimsy craft string that will not hold the weight of a flashlight, especially with how loosely Mischief is tying the string around them. He has no idea how to hang them from the ceiling. He nods to the order anyway, letting Mischief entertain himself while Stiles begins laying out his spinning thoughts. 

He writes HALES and sticks that one at the top of the slanted wall. He writes Grandma Hale—Mischief doesn’t know her name—and places it underneath, putting an empty sticky note under that to write down relevant details about her later. Then he puts ALPHA with _Talia, town council, lawyer_ written on the note underneath. Next to her, he puts down Thomas— _husband, therapist, usually seen with his kids_. He continues in order of assumed pack status, Peter next— _Left or Right Hand, “old but not old-old” (?), away often (dealing with threats?), unknown job_ —and Laura— _heir, high school, works at town bookshop_. Coach Elle is at the far end of the wall next to Talia’s cousins. He writes _evil runner >:(_ on her explanation note. Today had been their second run together and far worse than the day before, his body sore before they started.

Mischief idly corrects him here and there with information that’s irrelevant. Stiles adds it to humor him. 

“What’s my missions?” Mischief asks. “I’ve run out of stuffs and I’m bored.” 

Stiles shoves his pen behind his ear and turns around. Mischief lies on a stack of pillows like a luxurious King waiting for servants to feed him grapes. On the opposite wall, he’s mirrored Stiles in the most adorable way. There are seven notes—HALES, cult, alpha???, smart at finding secrets, Cora best at soccer, woods, and $$$.

Stiles clutches a hand over his heart. He wonders if there’s a Polaroid camera he can use to take a picture of the sight and hide in his notebooks. Baby’s first conspiracy! Oh my god, if he can get Mischief to pose in front of it with his gummy smile.

“Mission,” Mischief whines.

Right, cuteness later, business now. Stiles collapses on the pillows, fighting Mischief for space. Staring up at the peaked ceiling, he silently agrees hanging flashlights would be cool.

“Okay, so you already know your first mission. The Hales.”

Mischief groans. “I’ve told you everything.”

“Yeah, and you’ll tell me if you find out anything new. Like if someone new starts picking up Cora or, I don’t know, something like _your gym teacher being married to one of them_.”

“You’re welcome.”

“No, I—that’s something I needed to know before.”

“But now you can infiltrate!”

“I’m not supposed to infiltrate. They can’t know about me. Or you. We have to be sneaky, remember?”

“Because we’re spies,” Mischief says, punching a fist up in the air.

“You’re my top spy.”

“Only spy.”

“Top spy. So that’s mission one, keep me updated. Mission two is even more secret.”

Mischief sits up, cautiously excited.

“If I’m the boss giving you orders but I don’t tell you why I need to know about the Hales, how do you know that I’m one of the good guys?”

Mischief gasps. “Like you double-cross me! I know you don’t because, duh, you’re me.” Stiles smothers the burst of warmth in his chest. “We’re the good guys. But if you’re my boss and I’m a spy—any good spy always has a secret mission on top of their mission.” Mischief jumps up and paces as he talks. “I am not a drone or a sheep! I will be the very best-est at my job and then I’ll be even more best at figuring out why I’m doing this job. Secret under cover mission under my secret under cover mission!”

“You have to be super, super sneaky,” Stiles reminds. “We can’t let the Hales know we’re watching them. They can’t know about you adding notes to your wall.”

“I can befriend Cora!”

“I thought we agreed that was a no-no.”

“I can do it!”

“Will you be able to hold back asking questions?”

Mischief scowls. He opens his mouth and Stiles raises his eyebrows. “Okay, fine.” Mischief sits down and pouts. He props his chin in his hand. “Being a spy is hard.”

“You know you don’t have to do any of this—”

Mischief drops onto Stiles’ stomach, cutting off his heartfelt speech and knocking the air out of him. “No, I’m going to be a spy. I’m hungry. Make me a grilled cheese.”

➠ ➠ ➠

Stiles nearly cries when Coach Elle agrees to having weekends off with the lecture to stretch, hydrate, and sleep. As much as Stiles’ legs are like jelly, he hates to admit that just three days of a routine has given him a sense of stability to help start his days.

“TGIF,” Stiles wheezes when they circle back to his street. Elle laughs, not the slightest out of breath, and Stiles weakly flips her off. 

➠ ➠ ➠

Melissa and Mr. McCall are on a weekend getaway—gross—and Stiles offers to house sit. Mischief throws a fit that that if Stiles gets to spend the whole weekend with Scott, then he should, too. Noah asks if Stiles minds watching an extra kid and Stiles shrugs.

A few minutes after Melissa and Mr. McCall leave, Stiles thanks past him for replenishing his energy with all those naps. The next forty-eight hours of Scott and Mischief shenanigans wipes him out more than finishing a last-minute final and a night of running through the woods for his life combined.

Stiles tries for a more background presence where he makes sure they don’t kill each other or set the house on fire while going about his own business. He thought bringing Mischief along would relieve Stiles of being a source of entertainment. He vastly underestimated Scott’s desperation for affection being as strong as Mischief’s need for validation.

They incorporate Stiles into every game, most often as the bad guy. Stiles has _so_ many bruises. Oddly, he also ends up turning from villain to princess-in-distress at some point. He’s not exempt from calm-down activities either—aggressively snuggled by Scott during TV time. Mischief switches on-and-off between cuddling Scott or sandwiching Stiles between them.

By Sunday, not only are Stiles’ legs sore but now his arms and abdomen and basically every muscle are, too. Scott took advantage of weighing less than a feather by effectively using Stiles’ body like a jungle gym while Mischief cheered him on.

At least Mischief’s all tired out and ready for bed at the end, too exhausted to put up his usual fuss about leaving Scott. He falls asleep in his booster seat in the minute it takes for Stiles to run back in the house to grab Mischief’s special pillow and dinosaur toy. Stiles places the prized possessions in the passenger seat and starts the car.

He nearly has a heart attack when Mr. McCall pops up, knocking on the window loudly over the jeep’s spluttering engine. He shoves a wad of cash at Stiles when he cracks the window down, muttering something about not accepting charity. 

Is Mr. McCall aware of Stiles looking after Scott for the past months? Like, constantly? That the amount of time he’s spent with Scott by now all added up together is way more than forty-eight hours? Whatever, Stiles is not going to argue with the sudden pride complex if that makes him two hundred dollars richer. 

This money is not going toward coffee this time. San Francisco, here Stiles comes.

(Also, maybe some exercise clothes.)

➠ ➠ ➠

“I’m an adult, I’m not supposed to be bullied by jocks anymore,” Stiles says.

“If you can talk, I’m not bullying you enough. Pick up the pace.”

Stiles glares at Elle’s back muscles. “Why. Why me?”

“You’re the only kid guardian that’s not insufferable.”

“So,” and Stiles is back to wheezing, “you thought, ‘great! Now’s it’s my turn to be insufferable!’”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Homophobic.”

“I’m a lesbian.”

“Biphobic.”

“My wife’s bisexual.”

“I hope she’s ashamed of you for torturing an upstanding bisexual citizen such as I.”

“Upstanding? You’re lying in the street,” Elle says, looming over Stiles’ collapsed body, his limbs star-fished out as he stares up at the blinding sun.

“Move. I want a car to bring me the sweet release of death.”

“Do you need a piggyback ride home?”

Stiles glares. It’s half-hearted at best. He resents her question being genuine and not a snarky quip. “I’m a Big Boy. I don’t need to be carried.”

Elle laughs, stopping her jogging in place for once. “Man, try saying that around my in-laws. They pick me up if I so much as stub my toe.”

Stiles forces a laugh, sobering up at the reminder of who Elle is. Well, he finally found a motivator to get him running so he can be safely back home away from Hales. Thank fuck she’s not in the nuclear Hale family.

Groaning, he gets back up. 

➠ ➠ ➠

In the end, Noah provides the perfect opening for Stiles. Poor, clueless, fumbling, well-intentioned, painfully heterosexual Noah.

“I was thinking that I could, uh, spend some time with Mischief.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, biting into one of the donuts a deputy brought into the station. All this running with Elle is making him ravenous. 

“This weekend,” Noah continues, stilted. It’s sweet that he and Noah have grown close to the point that he’s worried about offending Stiles over wanting quality father-son time. “If you wanted to take the jeep up to the City for the. Um. Parade.”

“The parade?” Stiles sucks glazed cream off his fingers. Beacon Hills has a Fourth of July parade but that’s in, like, two weeks. Week and a half? Three weeks? Stiles doesn’t know time but it’s not July, yet.

“If, uh—that’s something you’re comfortable with. You can let me know and, uh, I can give you some gas money. And keep Mischief from prying if you don’t want him to know.”

_What the fuck is he talking about?_ Stiles acts along, “Okay...thanks.”

Noah’s whole body relaxes. Stiles half-expects him to clap his shoulder and say, _good talk, son_. Stiles at least picks up on that whatever Noah just did, it was dorky. He bumps their shoulders together playfully and starts teasing Noah for doing a spit-take last night when Mischief proclaimed over dinner that he knows where babies come from. 

Stiles does his own spit-take when he drives home and gets a glass of water from the kitchen before he heads up to the attic. He looks at the calendar to check if Mischief has any field trips coming up since it’s nearing the end of June and school gets out mid-July and—

_June. Parade. “The City”—San Francisco._

Stiles chokes half from water going down the wrong pipe and half from laughter. He’s gone to Pride Parades every year since freshmen year at college. Dad even came to a few in his awkward show of support.

Stiles grins hard enough his face hurts. 

At least he can have some fun before he gets his first death threat in this dimension.

“Be gay, do crimes,” Stiles tells the fridge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> somehow I completely fumbled and forgot school gets out mid-June not mid-July. We'll just pretend Beacon Hills school year goes until July and starts back up in mid-September, not late-August.
> 
> And a Hale enters the arena! Too soon for a close relationship canon Hale, so an OC for now. Baby steps :) Next chapter is all SF--business and pleasure
> 
> Thank you for the support!! <3 <3 <3 The excitement has inspired a fun sort-of sneaky scene I'm adding in one of the next few updates!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [How To Walk Before You Run](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24446821) by [Faladrast (surfgirl1)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/surfgirl1/pseuds/Faladrast)




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